The Ferris State soft­ball team answered a tough chal­lenge over the week­end as they won three of four games against two ranked opponents.

Ferris head coach Keri Becker feels that her team’s con­sis­tency is a big rea­son why the Bulldogs were able to have this late sea­son success.

“I am very happy com­ing away 3–1 from the week­end,” said Becker. “We played really well and we could have eas­ily been 4–0.”

Senior Rhea Flores made sure the week­end got off to a win­ning start against nation­ally No. 17-ranked Saginaw Valley State as she hit a game-winning sin­gle in the top of the sev­enth inning for a 6–5 Bulldog vic­tory. Flores’ RBI sin­gle capped off a three-run sev­enth inning, which Saginaw Valley was unable to over­come in the bot­tom of the inning.

In the sec­ond game of the series the Bulldogs came away vic­to­ri­ous as they won a pitcher’s duel 2–0. Ferris senior Kayle Stevenson recorded the win as she pitched a com­plete game shutout for her 10^th vic­tory of the year. Stevenson lim­ited the oppo­si­tion to three hits and one walk as she notched her fifth shutout of the spring.

“I felt really good out there on the mound and I had really good defense behind me,” said Stevenson.

In the open­ing game against nation­ally ninth-ranked Wayne State, Ferris took a 2–1 lead into the bot­tom of the sixth, but was unable to hold on as it ulti­mately fell to the Warriors 3–2. Freshman pitcher Dana Bowler threw a solid out­ing despite the loss as she allowed six hits, two walks, three runs, and five strikeouts.

It was another low-scoring bat­tle in the final game of the week­end as the Bulldogs beat Wayne State 2–1. Stevenson pitched another gem as she allowed five hits on her way to another com­plete game win. The vic­tory was her sev­enth in a row as she allowed only one run in 14 innings dur­ing the weekend’s road trip.

“Our pitch­ers are doing a great job on the mound,” said Becker. “All year I have been telling them to just keep us close and we will be in a lot of games.”

After this week­end the Bulldogs are 23–15 over­all and 14–8 in the con­fer­ence. The Bulldogs are 9–1 on the road this sea­son with four away con­tests left in the reg­u­lar season.

Ferris will play Grand Valley State on May 1 in a two-game series before they will par­tic­i­pate in the GLIAC tournament.

“Playing all these close games will help us in the tour­na­ment,” said Becker. “We want to be play­ing well against these tough teams.”

Stevenson feels that every day and every game the team is get­ting better.

“Every game we’re step­ping up and doing the lit­tle things,” said Stevenson. “Heading into the tour­na­ment we really like our chances.”

The Bulldogs played a dou­ble­header at Northwood on Tuesday, but the results were unavail­able as of press time. Check out fsu​torch​.com for results and details from the games. n