The Park University Gilbert softball team split their Thursday morning doubleheader with La Sierra by scores of 8-3 and 8-0.

  

The Buccaneers made some noise in the bottom half of the seventh inning in game one; Nadia Gutierrez was walked with the bases loaded to bring home Danni Garcia before Destinee Alvarez singled driving in Courtney Beckwith and Michele Dinicola hit a sacrifice fly that allowed Amber Saiz to score.

 

Gutierrez and Alvarez continued their solid play at the dish today; the infield tandem had nearly identical statlines, each going 2-3 with a walk and an RBI. Defensively, Gutierez racked up three putouts, while Alvarez had four plus three assists. 

 

But things got out of hand for the Bucs in the third inning when the Golden Eagles' Adriana Reyes managed an inside-the-park home run off of Dinicola's misplayed grounder. The error allowed three runs to score, plus one earned from starting pitcher Gabby Vallee.

 

The ace has struggled at times this season, but Friday's outing was easily Vallee's second best start of the season aside from her two-hit shutout of Benedictine last month; she went five innings and gave up just two earned runs and six hits.

 

Unearned runs proved to be the Achilles' heel of the Buccaneers today. The four errors they committed on the day accounted for five of the Golden Eagles' eight runs.

 

Game two's win was headlined by a dominant performance by starting pitcher, Jessica Mendoza; the sophomore righty threw a complete game shutout, gave up just five hits and walked zero.

 

Behind Mendoza's impressive outing, the Bucs' bats heated up as well. Beckwith was bumped from ninth in the lineup in game one to second in game two and proved that she could hit from anywhere in the order; she had another nice performance at the plate and went 1-2 with two runs and a walk. Alvarez also doubled down on her game one performance and went 2-4 with two runs and two RBIs. Saiz went 2-2 in the nine-hole with an RBI and walk.

 

In all, they got eight across and managed to end the game early via run rule, which marked the Bucs' first run-rule finish of the season. The Buccaneers are now 5-5 on the season and play another doubleheader with La Sierra tomorrow at 11 a.m. at Cactus Yards in Gilbert, Ariz.