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Clan topples Raiders convincingly By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings With a runner in scoring position, Shauna Wade's seventh inning at bat represented Southern Oregon University's last ditch effort - to score. She popped out harmlessly. This wasn't the statement the Raiders wanted to make. One day after delivering an emotional sweep of league foe Concordia, 18th-ranked Southern Oregon was walloped by No. 1-ranked Simon Fraser in a Sunday doubleheader at University Field. Southern Oregon University senior pitcher Brandi Brown hurls a pitch while a Simon Fraser batter waits. The Raiders were swept by the Clan, 8-0 and 6-0, to fall to 15-4 overall on the season. Contributed Photo/ANDREW MARIMAN The Clan, which eliminated SOU from the Region I tournament last season, rode the powerful right arm of senior All-American Auburn Sigurdson to an 8-0 blowout in Game 1, then got another complete-game shutout out of an All-American, junior Erin Thomas, en route to a 6-0 romp in the nightcap. The loss dropped the previously hot Raiders, who had won seven of eight coming in, to 15-4 on the season, while Simon Fraser improved to 17-3. "They're the No. 1-ranked team in the country for a reason," Southern Oregon head coach James Gravelle said. "Our mistakes, they capitalized on. In the first game, it's a 3-0 game. They were a better team than us today, hopefully today only, but both of those games should have been a 3-0, 2-0 game. We didn't hit the ball very well today, and we made so many mistakes in the field that we made routine balls hard." The Raiders' third-year coach spoke the truth. SOU shot itself in the foot all day with fielding errors and finished the twin bill with five miscues, four in Game 1. That shoddy display of defense allowed the Clan to take the opener in five innings by the eight-run mercy rule despite the fact that the visitors scored only one earned run against Raider starter Brandi Brown. Brown (14-3), barely one day removed from 10 innings of work against Concordia, was tagged with both losses. She pitched the first four innings of Game 1 and allowed seven hits while walking four and striking out three. She then went the distance in Game 2, allowing nine hits and six earned runs while walking three and striking out two. For Simon Fraser, Sigurdson pitched all five innings in the opener and came within an out of registering the first no-hitter for a Raider opponent in the three-year history of University Field. Raider freshman catcher Kelsea Schoenberg slapped a single to right to break up the no-no with two outs in the fifth, but Sigurdson quickly smothered that mini-rally by striking out sophomore left fielder Kirby MacKay in four pitches. Armed with a wicked fastball, Sigurdson allowed the one hit while striking out six and walking two. Thomas was nearly as dominant in the sweep-clincher, allowing five hits, striking out nine and walking no one. "She's one of the fastest, if not the fastest," Raider third baseman Angie Chaplin said of Sigurdson's heater. "We've went against pretty close, but those are two pretty good pitchers." While Sigurdson and Thomas had little trouble squashing Southern's battery, Brown struggled to get each and every out. Practically every Simon Fraser batter took Brown deep into the count - an annoyance the Raiders' ace rarely has to deal with. Three innings into Game 1, Brown had already thrown 98 pitches. When the ball was put into play, Southern's defense didn't make Brown's job any easier - a trend that began early. In a sign of things to come, Simon Fraser opened the doubleheader with consecutive infield singles and scored the first run of the day after Raider senior shortstop Latisha Inget overthrew catcher Kelsea Schoenberg on a play at the plate. The Clan went on to score four runs that first inning on six hits and an error. Simon Fraser added two more scores in the second on a pair of RBI singles by juniors Haylee Rempel and Jes Neilson, and tacked on insurance runs in the fourth and fifth. "It snowballs, it's a snowball effect," Gravelle said of Simon Fraser's first-inning charge. "A couple hits here and there, we dropped our heads a little bit, and we've got to stay up and up there at all times. It doesn't matter if were up 6-0 or down 6-0." Rempel went 3-for-4 with 2 RBI's in Game 1 to lead five Clan batters with at least two hits. The second game was the same story, but a little longer. Brown and company managed to get through the first two innings unscathed and even threatened to seize an early lead, but failed to capitalize on a two-on, one-out situation in the first. The Clan took control in the third by scoring four runs on five hits, including back-to-back RBI doubles by senior Erin Cumpstone and Rempel. Rempel again led Simon Fraser at the plate in Game 2, going 2-for-4 with two RBIs. For SOU, sophomore center fielder Seanna Doyel batted 2-for-2, becoming the only Raider to notch a two-hit, single-game showing. Inget, sophomore Haley Varley and sophomore Brandi Winters also picked up hits for Southern in Game 2, but the Raiders struggled to catch up to blistering fastballs all afternoon and finished the doubleheader 6-for-40 at the plate. "Well, it gives us somewhere to go from," Brown said. "We know what direction we have to go. We just played the best of the best, and to beat them we're going to have to raise our game up." Gravelle agreed, and hopes Sunday's disaster will help his squad in the long run. He also said he had a good talk after the game with Clan coach Mike Renney, who also coaches the Canadian national team. "He praised us afterwards," Gravelle said. "He said we played hard and he knew that that wasn't the team he faced last year (at regionals). We know that and our girls know that, and it's how we're going to rebound this year and next week (in league games at Albertson and Eastern Oregon) that's really going to set the tone for us for the rest of the season." LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -