No. 15 seed Texas A&M softball team secured a 9-0 win in five innings over Prairie View A&M.
An early home run in the first inning by senior Tori Vidales and a one-hit shutout by pitcher, Samantha Show pushed the Aggies over the Panthers.
A&M head coach Jo Evans, this win is just what her team needed to regain their confidence after losing games, including the opening game of the SEC Tournament, prior to the regional.
“It was exactly what I had envisioned. It was what I thought was necessary to get the stink off of some games that we didn’t play well,” Evans said. “I felt like we needed to come out and have a dominating performance to remember who we are and get back in this ballpark and get our fans in it. I am just very pleased with the way our kids played.”
After losing in five innings and giving away four runs in the first inning, Prairie View’s head coach Vernon Bland said she made sure her players were not ashamed of their loss after playing one of the top teams in the country.
“I just told my team, ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We just played the 15th ranked team in the country.’ I think we did a pretty good job. If we made a couple of plays early in the first inning it might have changed the whole turn out of the game,” Bland said.
The Aggies seemed to have control of the game from the beginning. They scored early in the first with a double to left center by sophomore Sarah Hudek, who then brought in junior Keeli Milligan. Vidales then came up to the plate and sent a homer down left field to give A&M a 3-0 lead.
Vidales joked that she was glad she didn’t hit another letter on the scoreboard like she did previously in practice after a coach commented that she couldn’t hit it over the board.
“Times like this I wish we had the distance tracker that baseball has. I honestly don’t know how far it went, but at least 300 feet. I was just really glad I didn’t break another letter (on the scoreboard) because I broke one in practice, and they had to come out and fix it,” Vidales said. “I am just glad I could get some runs for my team and have some insurance for Sam. We were hitting batting practice when we got back from the SEC tournament, and Coach [Keith] Stein said, ‘I bet you can’t hit it over the scoreboard,’ so I said that I would try. I hit it, and it almost got there, but then it hit the ‘S’ and it broke on the field. I felt so bad.”
The offense would score another run in the first, along with two runs in the third and three runs in the fourth inning. Show took care of things on the defensive side and came out with a win after pitching five complete innings with one hit and two strikeouts.
Show said her dominance in the game was due to her trust in her team and simply having fun out on the field.
“I was just going out and having fun playing softball with my friends. I just trusted in what the team was doing,” Show said. “I was in the middle of the lineup. I was seeing the batters ahead of me go out and attack, and I felt comfortable doing that. I actually told Riley, ‘let’s see how many plays you can make at first base today’ to just try to make it as fun as possible. When we are having fun, that is when we play our best.”
The Aggies will move on to play McNeese State after the Cowgirls defeated Baylor 11-10 in game one. A&M will play on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at Davis Diamond. Baylor and Prairie View will face off later that day at 4 p.m.