It was another disappointing weekend for the No. 20 Oregon women’s softball team as the Ducks suffered their second Pacific-10 Conference sweep of the season, falling in all three games to No. 15 Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif.
Oregon (33-19, 8-13 Pac-10) jumped to an early 4-0 lead in the first inning of the series opener on Thursday afternoon, but a three-run second inning by the Cardinal followed by a four-run third put the game out of reach in a hurry.
Freshman Kaylan Howard led the way offensively for Oregon, going 1 for 2 with a three-run homer in that big first inning. The Cardinal completed the game with nine runs on eight hits, beating the Ducks 9-4.
The following day, it was Stanford who jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first, paving the way for Cardinal sophomore Ashley Chinn’s ninth complete game of the season. Chinn struck out four, walked none, and gave up three hits on the day. Oregon senior Neena Bryant scored the team’s lone run in the top of the third after hitting her 38th career double, which is the third-best career mark in school history, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the final 5-1 defeat.
Oregon squabbled an early lead again on Saturday afternoon. Down 2-0, Howard smacked her second three-run home run of the weekend over the left-center-field fence to put the Ducks up 3-2 in the top of the fourth. But Stanford responded back with three runs of its own in the bottom of that inning, before tacking on additional runs in the fifth and sixth to take the final game 7-3. Stanford’s three-time All-American Alissa Haber became the Cardinal’s career leader in doubles with her 71st double on Saturday, surpassing former Stanford great Jessica Mendoza.
For the weekend, sophomore shortstop Kelsey Chambers was Oregon’s leading hitter (.286, 2 for 7, two doubles, two RBI), while Howard (.250, 2 for 8, two home runs, six RBI) recorded her seventh and eighth round trippers of the season.
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