Trojans open season 2-0

Tucson, AZ 3/4/07 - The 2007 season has officially begun and the Trojans kicked off the season with a pair of wins in their first day of a 12 game road trip in Arizona. In the first game of the twin billing the Trojans faced a split squad from William Penn (IA) a perennial NAIA powerhouse, who finished the 2006 season with a 55-22 record. The Trojans jumped out to an early 2-0 lead after a lead-off walk by Lori Olen and then three consecutive base hits by Emily Pyle, Jessie Klingenberg and DeDe Siehndel. William Penn would answer in the bottom of the first by scoring 4 unearned runs off of 5 Trojan errors, taking the lead 4-2. The Trojans and the Statesman would exchange runs in the 3^rd and fourth innings making the score going into the 5^th inning 5-3 in favor of William Penn. The Trojans who had previously left runners at second and third in the fourth inning would capitalize in the fifth by scoring 3 more runs and take the lead 6-5.

     Behind the pitching of senior Steph Brakel the Trojans would hold onto the 6-5 lead and secure their first victory of the 2007 season. Brakel who recorded 16 wins last season for the Trojans went the distance collecting her first win of the season while allowing 6 hits, no earned runs and recording her first strike out of the season.

      Offensively the Trojans were lead by senior catcher Ashlee Kirschenman. Kirschenman went 2 for 4 with 2 doubles and 2 RBI’s. Emily Pyle, Jessie Klingenberg, DeDe Siehndel and Jamie Becker all added a hit a piece for the Trojans in the win.

      In the second game of the morning the Trojans faced Purdue University North Central, in what turned out to be a pitchers dual between freshman Dakota Novotny for the Trojans and Kate Golden for Purdue. The two pitchers combined for 15 strikeouts and 7 hits in 16 innings of work. Novotny, a freshman from Clive, IA., shut down the Purdue offense striking out seven including two of the first three hitters she faced.

      The dual lasted into the 8^th inning when the international tie breaker rule was put into effect and the Trojans erupted for 4 runs. Taking a 4-0 lead the Trojans again looked to Novotny to keep the Purdue hitters off balance, in the bottom of the eighth inning and that’s exactly what she did getting three straight ground ball outs to secure her first win of the season and of her young college career.

      Offensively the Trojans were lead by Jessie Klingenberg who had two hits including a 2 RBI double in the 8^th, Ashlee Kirschenman also drove in two and Lori Olen added the sole remaining hit for the Trojans.

      “A colleague once told me "winning ugly is better than losing with style”, and we did that today. In the first game I don’t know if we could have played any worse than we did, as a team, committing 8 errors. I have to give credit to Steph (Brakel) she really did an excellent job of keeping us in the game until we could calm down and get something going offensively. And in the second game we got a great performance by Dakota Novotny, I don’t know if you could ask for a better performance for your first college outing than what Dakota did today. I am pleased with the way the team rebounded from such a poor start of the day and like I mentioned to the team our goal at this point is to simply improve one game at a time and that’s what they did today and that is what we expect tomorrow as well.” Stated head coach Ken Prorok.

      The Trojans face William Penn again tomorrow at 8:30 am and then take on Peru State at 1:00 pm in the Tucson Invitational games.