Late Saturday night, as junior utility player Dylan Supak struck out swinging to end the game, the LSU softball team dropped to 0-2 to start the season.
Behind strong pitching and an offensive awakening, LSU countered the bad start with a four-game win streak it can build on the rest of the season.
“It was not what we wanted to start with,” said sophomore infielder Sandra Simmons. “But we could have either taken that down a negative path and let our weekend go down the drain, or learn from it like we did.”
LSU will take this momentum back to Tiger Park when it hosts the Tiger Invitational this weekend, an event comprised of four teams. LSU will play five times over three days, including two games against Penn St. and Northwestern and one game against George Washington.
After losing games to Texas and Minnesota to start the season, the Tigers won four straight games by an average of seven runs. The team excelled most on defense and pitching, allowing only five runs and eight hits through the four games.
The biggest standout was freshman pitcher Baylee Corbello, who won Southeastern Conference Freshman of the Week honors after pitching two complete games with double-digit strikeouts in each contest. Corbello comes to the team after being highly recruited out of high school.
Corbello said her performance over the weekend gives her ambition to succeed through the remainder of the season.
“I was excited with my first showings,” Corbello said. “I feel like that will kind of set the tone of how the rest of the season will go. I’ll keep having expectations for myself and it makes me want to keep working harder.”
The Tigers’ toughest test will most likely be Northwestern, who has made the NCAA regionals three out of the last six seasons and comes into the invitational 3-1. The Wildcats are led by sophomore infielder Andrea Filler, who is batting .778 in her four games with the team after transferring from Boston College.
LSU coach Beth Torina centered on Northwestern’s success building its program and said her team needs to be ready for anything.
“Northwestern historically has been a very solid softball program though, and they’ve done some great things,” Torina said. “They’ve been in the College World Series and they have a ton of experience there, so we’re expecting quite a ballgame from them.”
Penn St. comes into the season with new coach Amanda Lehotak at the helm. Lehotak spent seven seasons at UTSA and Jacksonville, where she led the Dolphins to their first NCAA Tournament in school history.
George Washington, meanwhile, will look to find some traction to its season after starting the year 0-5.
The Tigers begin their weekend with a doubleheader against Penn St. and George Washington on Friday starting at 3 p.m. Torina said she believes there is room for improvement, but she admires the improvement the team had as the weekend went on.
“I thought we learned a lot about ourselves, and we definitely got better as the weekend went on,” Torina said. “So if I can say we got better every week of this season, we’re going to be in a pretty good spot come the middle of May.”
Contact Tommy Romanach at [email protected]
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