After taking game one in a 14-2 run rule victory, the Oregon softball team brought a 12-game winning streak into the second game of Friday’s doubleheader against LMU.
Freshman Makenna Kliethermes got the start for the Ducks, bringing a 1.52 ERA and 12.0 K/7 to the mound. She came out firing, striking out the first six batters she faced.
Haley Cruse and Hanna Delgado led off the bottom of the first with a walk and a single, respectively. Delgado advanced to third on a fielder’s choice and scored on a sacrifice fly by Alyssa Brito. With two outs, the LMU center fielder dropped a routine fly ball to allow Oregon to jump out to an early 2-0 lead.
The Ducks went down one-two-three in the second, their first quiet inning of either game.
The Lions finally made contact in the third as Kliethermes induced a popup to shortstop. Kliethermes hit the next batter, but induced another popup and a flyout to hold the lead at 2-0.
Just as LMU pitcher Marina Vitalich was settling into a groove, Allee Bunker crushed a two-out home run to extend the Ducks’ lead to 3-0 in the third.
Kliethermes struck out five more batters in the fourth and fifth, upping her total to a career-high 11 through five hitless innings.
The Ducks got two on in the fifth with a Cruse walk and a Bunker single, but left both runners stranded.
Kliethermes recorded her 12th strikeout in another hitless frame, taking a no-hitter to the seventh inning. It was around then that she said Vallery Wong blurted out that she hadn’t allowed any hits, but luckily for Kliethermes and the Ducks, this didn’t jinx anything.
“If she would have jinxed me, I would have been so mad…,” Kliethermes said. “Everyone smacked [Wong] apparently, saying like, ‘Be quiet.’”
She made it look easy, striking out the side in order in the final inning to cap the no-hitter and the doubleheader sweep.
“It was such a great feeling that my team came out and was celebrating with me,” Kliethermes said.
She struck out 15 batters total in an absolutely dominant performance as LMU batters just could not make consistent contact against her sharp fastballs.
“I really liked how she hit her spots today,” head coach Melyssa Lombardi said. “There’s times where she’ll move the ball but sometimes it’ll move a little too much over the plate, and I thought she was strong with her movement and the location of her movement. That’s what really impressed me. And then when she needed to go to her changeup today, she was able to get to that as well.”
The Ducks have now won 13 games in a row and hold a 22-1 record on the season. They’ll go for the three-game sweep over LMU at noon on Sunday.
