The Florida Atlantic Tournament in Boca Raton, Fla., came to a close on Saturday as Ball State softball suffered a loss to Kansas.
The team defeated Michigan State (7-2), Stony Brook (5-2) and Florida A&M (9-0), though fell to Kansas (7-8) during the three-day tournament. The Cardinals overall season record is now 11-9.
“I feel like we are in a pretty good place right now,” coach Craig Nicholson said of the team at the current point in the schedule.
Ball State remained strong at the plate throughout the competition.
Eight home runs were hit in the three-game weekend bringing the team’s overall total for home runs to 21 on the season with a .315 batting average.
The Cardinals are well ahead of last year’s pace for home runs and doubles as they reached 42 team doubles during the FAU Tournament after 20 games. Last season Ball State had 100 doubles all year.
Senior center fielder Amanda Carpenter recorded her second career grand slam against Michigan State as she drove the ball over the left field wall, helping boost the team to a 7-2 victory over the Big Ten opponent.
“We hit great all weekend and we made some very good adjustments against some very good pitching,” Nicholson said.
The pitching of freshmen Nicole Steinbach and Kelsey Schifferdecker also ended on a high note after the weekend with 18 combined strikeouts. The duo pitched a combined 2.80 ERA over the weekend bringing the overall total to 2.85.
“We made some errors at bad times that really cost us some games on this trip,” Nicholson said.
Despite errors made in the field, the Cardinals managed to come out of the second weekend maintaining a winning season.
The team is currently .955 in the field with Carpenter, sophomores Jessica Craft and Loren Cihlar and freshman Sasha Margulies each fielding 1.000
“My big thing on this trip was just to continue to grow as a team and I think that we definitely did that as we went through the week,” Nicholson said.
