In Wednesday’s weeknight match-up against Campbell University, the first North Carolina women’s softball player to be ruled out was tagged trying to steal home.
But for this team, those outs are the outs it would prefer to see.
Coach Donna Papa said that aggressive play on all fronts wins games for the Tar Heels, as it did on Wednesday in their 9-0 win over the Campbell Camels.
“I don’t want to have a lull in our scoring. I want to put pressure on the other team,” Papa said. “One of our goals is to put the ball in play all the time, and if we can keep on putting the ball in play, we can maybe make teams make mistakes, as they did. We want to challenge them.”
That strategy paid hefty dividends for UNC’s offense, which in the second inning scored three runs on three Campbell errors, including a dropped fly ball in the infield and a bad throw to first base. In the first inning, Amy Nece reached first base on a misfielded bunt.
But sometimes, to be truly aggressive, batters can’t rely on errors. Logan Foulks and Constance Orr both took matters into their own hands in the opening inning and produced a pair of two-run homers. Those blasts, on top of an earlier RBI single from Ally Blake, put UNC up 5-0 going into the second inning.
“We’re definitely an ankle-biter type of team,” Foulks said. “So when we see a mistake we try to capitalize on it every chance we get.”
Encouraged by their early success, UNC’s batters continued to swing for the fences, often coming through early and fouling balls off their bodies. When Campbell introduced Julia Callicutt, its third pitcher on the night, the Tar Heel bats, though swinging early and often, began to cool off.
Down 9-0, Campbell managed to keep UNC off the scoreboard in the third and fourth innings.
