DEKALB, Ill. – The Northern Illinois University softball team concludes its road and non-conference schedule when it travels to Valparaiso, Ind. to play a doubleheader against the Valparaiso Crusaders at the Valpo Softball Field, on Wednesday.
First pitch for the doubleheader between the Huskies (18-28) and the Crusaders (23-21) starts at 2 p.m. NIU owns an all-time record of 29-13 against Valparaiso dating back to 1963 and has won the last four meetings between the two teams.
"They are kind of in the same boat as we are battling and trying to get into their conference tournament," said NIU head softball coach
Christina Sutcliffe. "I am sure they will be trying some different things by getting some players some innings and try to get momentum as well. Their pitching has been doing pretty good as of late and they have some offensive power. We just have to figure out how to hit their pitching."
NIU has won four of their last six games, batting .306 with five home runs and 26 runs batted in. During that stretch, the Huskies are led by
Sam Schmidt (Lombard, Ill. /Willowbrook). The Huskie junior is batting .421 with two home runs, six RBIs, and 16 total bases. Junior
Jenny Van Geertry (Mokena, Ill. /Lincoln-Way East) continues to leads the Huskies hitting .399 with 55 hits and 10 stolen bases.
Senior
Alaynie Woollard (New Castle, Ind. /New Castle) leads the Huskies with seven home runs and 34 RBIs. In addition, Woollard is fifth in the NCAA with seven triples and is one away from tying NIU's single season record.
Junior
Alex Frenz (Oakville, Mo. /Oakville) leads the Huskies pitching staff. In 34 appearances, Frenz has a record of 8-6 with an ERA of 2.67 in 99.2 innings of work. Freshman
Mackenzie Bryan (Elwood, Ind. /Elwood) is not far back recording a 2.81 ERA in 23 appearances.
Live stats and live audio will be available through valpoathletics.com. Fans can follow the NIU Huskies Gameday account
@NIUscoresfor inning-by-inning updates. Fans can follow the historic 60
thyear of NIU Huskies softball on Twitter
@NIUSoftball, Facebook
@NIU.Softball, and Instagram
@niu_softball.
–NIU–
