After their long night on Tuesday playing against St. Leo University, Tiffin University was back in action again last night against Florida Tech. As you can clearly see from the title of this post, it was another split for the Dragons.
Unlike Tuesday night, there was a lot less scoring in these games. In fact, the total score of both games was less than the single score of either team in the first game on Tuesday night. Also unlike the night before, my niece had the opportunity to play in both games instead of just one of them.
This is a photo I took of her last fall "watching" her younger sister play softball. She's a quite amazing young lady navigating the world of living away from home for the first time, playing sports at the university level, and totally crushing all of her classes with a 4.0 GPA or pretty close to that.
Game one was a 2 to 1 win for the Dragons over the Panthers. The first run of the game was a sacrifice fly by none other than my niece to get the scoring started for the Dragons. The next inning they scored another one and that was all they needed to push past Florida Tech.
I have to admit, her fly out wasn't the best hit I have ever seen her get. In fact, in the first game she only had one at bat before they ended up pulling her because of a pitching change they made. If you need an explanation on all of that, check out my post from yesterday.
Just in case you are wondering, Tiffin got 2 runs off six hits in the first game versus Florida Tech's one run off four hits. Florida Tech was also credited with 2 errors in that game while Tiffin had zero.
The second game was a bit of a different story. Florida State quickly went ahead 3 to 0 in the first inning. It wasn't until later in the game that the Tiffin bats really started to come alive. In fact, by the 7th inning they had tied up the game. Unfortunately, the Tiffin ace Feldkamp was struggling a little bit and she had a wild pitch in the bottom of the 7th that gave Florida Tech the walk off victory.
It was a bit heartbreaking for the Dragons, but I think they learned from it.
Although losses are never what you want to hear about, the exciting thing for this game was the fact that my niece seemed like she was getting her groove back in terms of hitting. She went two for three and the two hits she had were pretty awesome. It's the way I remember her hitting when she was in high school and the way I have always known she can hit.
I was texting with her after the game and she admitted it felt really good to hit the ball so solidly again. She said she was just trying to have fun and not get in her head so much. It paid off!
I'd also like to point out that she had some great defensive plays out in left field as well. She saved more than a few runs from scoring across both games last night.
Tiffin had three runs off ten hits in the second game with three errors versus the Panthers 4 runs off 8 hits and two errors.
She said that today she thinks they are spending a well deserved day off at the beach, then tomorrow they are back in action with a continuation of the Spring Games.
I look forward to following them over the weekend. This has already been a good start to the season for the Dragons compared to last year. You can really tell that coach Paige is starting to make the team her own.
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