ARLINGTON, Texas – With the regular season winding down, Tarleton faced a crucial Western Athletic Conference series at UT Arlington. The Texans answered the call with a road sweep of the Lady Mavericks, capped off by a 4-3 victory on Sunday at Allan Saxe Field.
The sweep locked the Texans (28-24, 12-9 WAC) into the top-eight of the WAC standings, clinching their berth into the WAC Tournament, which will be played May 10-13 in Phoenix.
"I'm very proud of the effort this weekend, I thought we did a great job of finding ways to win a tough series on the road," head coach
Mark Cumpian said. "We fought for one another and I feel we are starting to play our best ball right now. This weekend we were only focused on winning every game, so for a sweep to result in a WAC Tournament berth is very exciting, but we have more to do until then."
Currently the Texans hold the fourth spot in the WAC standings out of 12 teams in the conference. Only eight of the 12 make the conference tournament. Tarleton has a 3.0 game lead on Nos. 9 and 10, UT Arlington and Abilene Christian, and because the purple and white won both series against the Lady Mavericks and Wildcats, they own the tiebreaker.
This will be Tarleton's first NCAA Division I conference tournament in their first season eligible for it.
The Texans won all three games in Arlington on Saturday-Sunday by three runs or fewer, including the last two by one-run apiece, to earn their first conference sweep of the season. They extended the Lady Mavericks (19-27, 9-12 WAC) into their tied-second longest losing streak of the season, now four games long.
Kelci Hill got the scoring started on Sunday with a two-run home run in the third to put Tarleton ahead 2-0. This was the second straight day Hill hit a home run, her first bombs as a Texan. Before this weekend, she had gone 748 days in-between home runs, her last launched in April of 2021 with Middle Tennessee State.
In the bottom half of the third, the Lady Mavericks answered with two runs of their own, punishing the Texans for making an error. With the bases loaded and no outs, UTA singled two runs home to tie the game. But Tarleton starting pitcher
Tristan Bridges limited the damage, getting three straight outs to end the inning.
In the fifth,
Katy Schaefer hit her team-leading 10th home run of the season, a two-run blast to lift Tarleton to a 4-2 lead. Schaefer is now batting a team-best .368 on the year and has a team-high 45 RBI.
In the final three innings, Tarleton faced traffic on the base paths in each frame, but only allowed one run at the end. They used two double plays, one in the fifth and one in the sixth, to get out of two runners one with one out in each inning situations. In the seventh, UTA loaded the bases with no outs and down 4-2.
Grace Garcia replaced Bridges and only allowed an RBI fielder's choice, earning the save.
Bridges (11-11) earned her 11th win of the year, tied for the most on the team with Garcia. She covered 6.0 IP, allowing three earned runs on eight hits and five walks, striking out three. Garcia recorded her first save, throwing 1.0 IP, allowing just one hit.
Tarleton had eight hits in the game by seven different players.
Kayla Wallace had the lone multi-hit performance (2-for-3), while Schaefer and Hill each had a hit and two RBI.
Austin Germain,
Tristyn Trull,
MacKenzie Peterson and
Ashlee LaRue also had singles in the game, with Trull adding a walk.
Just one conference series remains for the Texans ahead of the WAC Tournament, but before that, Tarleton next plays their final non-conference game of the year on Tuesday at Houston Christian at 5 p.m. CT.
