CEDAR CITY, Utah - The ball was flying out of Kathryn Berg Field on Wednesday afternoon, as the Thunderbirds tallied three grand slams and a single home run in a 13-9 victory over the Dixie State Trailblazers.
SUU head coach Tom Gray couldn't remember a game where one of his teams hit three grand slams, and was extremely pleased with the way the squad played on Wednesday.
“I thought that we did a really good job of staying disciplined with our at bats,” he said. “I don't think they threw a lot of strikes, in fact they were behind in the count a lot of times, but we didn't get frustrated and start chasing bad pitches. We got pitches out over the plate that we could hit hard, and obviously we hit it hard.”
SUU shortstop Kendall Kapitzke was one of the players that had a four-run knock, and said after a couple tough weekends Wednesday's game was a nice change of pace and will be very helpful moving forward.
“This game can help us a lot because it can give us some positives, because we were looking at the negatives because we were struggling, but we have so many positives from this game that we can just take it to the next ones,” she said.
The Trailblazers took an early 2-0 lead in the top of the first, but SUU responded with a run of their own in the bottom of the second to pull back within one. That run was a homerun off the bat of Jordan Theurer.
Dixie State was quick to up the lead, however, as they hung four runs on the board in the top of the third to extend their lead to 6-1.
That's when the Thunderbirds got going, as Morgan Leonard hit the ball out of the park with the bases loaded to pull SUU back within one.
After Dixie put one more run up in the top of the fourth, the T-Birds loaded the bases again, and this time Kapitzke drove it out of the park for a grand slam to put SUU in the lead 9-7.
The T-Birds weren't done, as Kylee Wolf knocked one out of the park in the bottom of the fifth, with the bases loaded once again, to put the third grand slam on the scoresheet for the Thunderbirds and put SUU up 13-7.
The Trailblazers put two more on the board in the top of the sixth, but they didn't get anymore and it wouldn't be enough as the T-Birds took the game 13-9.
Next up for the T-Birds will be a doubleheader against Montana on Saturday, with the three-game series wrapping up on Sunday. Play will start both days at noon.
Livestreams of the games will be available at WatchBigSky.com and updates can be followed on Twitter @SUUGameday.
Attendance to all home softball games is free of charge.
