GNAC Softball: Wolves, Vikings Split Softball Twinbill

WWU gets the 5-2 opener, Wolves blank Viks’ 6-0 in nightcap.

Salem-News.com SPORTS

MONMOUTH - Western Oregon’s Christina Cooke tossed a four-hit shutout, retiring 12 batters in a row at one point, helping lead her Wolves to a 6-0 nightcap win over Western Washington, salvaging a split of a Great Northwest Athletic Conference softball doubleheader.

The Vikings won the opener, 5-2.

The divide leaves the Wolves on top of the GNAC standings with a 7-1 league mark and they are 18-17 overall.

Western Washington is now 16-16 on the year and 1-3 in conference play.

Cooke, a junior from Tualatin, scattered her four hits while walking only one batter and fanning one Viking hitter. She improved to 8-10 on the year.

She got all the offense that she would need in the first inning when the Wolves scored three unearned runs and sent eight batters to the plate.

Bonnie Trigero and Trina Dorn each had RBI singles in the inning.

Trigero would later blast a monster home run to lead off the fourth inning and WOU would add two more runs in the fifth thanks to an RBI-double by Melissa Wilson, who also later scored on a WWU error.

WOU had 11 hits in the second game, three each by Sutherland and Jamie Becker. Trigero was 2-for-3 with two RBI.

In the first game, WWU scored twice in the top of the first on RBI-singles by Liza Teichler and Ashley Osman, and the Wolves then answered half of that in the bottom half of the inning with back-to-back doubles by Sutherland and Amanda Fleer.

The Wolves scored another run to tie the game in the third inning (2-2) on an unearned run.

But the visitors took advantage of two WOU errors in the fourth inning to add two more runs and scored an insurance run in the fifth when Osman doubled and then came home on Hannah Becker’s single.

Meanwhile, Viking pitcher Jackie Quint retired 19 of the final 20 batters that she faced to keep the Wolves off the scoreboard.

She gave up just three hits in the game, one earned run and fanned nine. She is now within two K’s of becoming WWU’s career leader in that category (she now has 387).

Sutherland had two of WOU’s three hits in the game, while Meghan Flem and Becker had two hits each for WWU.

The two teams will square off again on Thursday with a 1:00 PM doubleheader. The games will be non-league contests

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