Jordan McAlpine
SPORTS EDITOR
The Omaha softball team couldn’t have asked for a better start to their 10-game road trip. The Mavericks won a pair of games at North Dakota on Saturday and finished off their first conference sweep since 2016 in dominant fashion on Sunday.
Omaha is now 17-11 on the season and 6-3 in Summit League play. The Mavericks are also 6-1 on the road this season, which has already surpassed their road win total from last season (five).
The Mavericks scored four runs over the first three innings of Saturday’s first game and went on to a 6-0 win. Jamie White plated the first Omaha run in the top of the first with an RBI single. That was her first of two RBI in the game and first of seven on the weekend.
White was named the Summit League Player of the Week for the first time in her career as she went 7-for-13 and also scored three runs.
Sydney Ross hit her first home run in the season in the fifth to make it 5-0 and the Mavericks had more than enough support. Kamryn Meyer struck out 14 batters in the circle and picked up her 10th win of the season. It was also her ninth shutout of the season as Meyer continues to dominate.
]As for Saturday’s second contest, the Mavericks won in a much different fashion. Omaha trailed 1-0 heading into the sixth inning and ended up winning 3-2 in 10. Ross led off that sixth inning with a single, stole second and ended up scoring two batters later on a single by Taylor Johnson.
The two teams traded runs in the ninth, but the Mavericks took the lead back in the 10th. Once again, White was involved. The senior clubbed her fifth home run of the season to give Omaha a 3-2 lead. Meyer then retired all three UND batters in the bottom half of the inning for her second win of the day and 11th of the season.
Meyer earned her 12th win on Sunday, as she tossed the first 2.2 innings, and White drove in four runs at the plate. The Mavericks finished the sweep with a 11-2 run-rule win in five innings. Both sides each scored a pair of runs in the first, but Omaha exploded for six runs in the second and quickly put the game out of hand.
Izzy Eltze ignited the Omaha offensive outburst and White delivered the knockout punch with a three-run home run. It was White’s second homer of the weekend and sixth of the season. Lexi Burkhardt added some insurance in the third inning with a two-run shot, which made it a 10-2 game, and Rachel Weber tacked on one more in the fifth with an RBI single. The Mavericks also finished the day with 13 hits, which is tied for the team’s season high.
The Mavericks have now won four straight and with that 6-3 mark in conference play, Omaha sits in second place in the Summit League standings. Omaha heads to St. Thomas next weekend for games four, five and six on the 10-game trip.
Game one begins at noon on Friday, April 15, and will be followed by the second game of the doubleheader shortly after. The two teams will wrap-up the series with one game on Saturday.
