Trena Peel has swagger. The first-year Buffalo head softball coach has won an SEC Player of the Year award, represented her country in the Junior Olympic games and excelled as a coach largely because of this simple yet often misunderstood trait. Swagger is a characteristic Peel wants her teams to encompass.
It's a big weekend for Buffalo athletics with Mid-American Conference titles and on the line for multiple teams and the football team playing its spring game.
After a week when all the excitement in UB Athletics came off the court, the UB teams are preparing for a busy weekend.
Baseball takes weekend series The baseball team picked up a series win as it traveled to Farmville, Va.
Senior pitcher Holly Johnson had a perfect game going into the ninth; she had never recorded a perfect game before and was extremely eager. Anticipation mounted as she took the ball, ready to make the biggest throw in her young life.
The softball team lost its last 10 games and needed a player to step up to end the skid. That player was junior third baseman Alyssa Ward. Ward hit for the cycle on Tuesday to propel Buffalo (9-20, 1-6 Mid-American Conference) to a 10-4 win over Canisius (9-22) by going 4-for-5 from the plate tallying six RBIs. Ward's four hits for the day made her the third player in team history to record four hits in one game.
April has started off poorly for the softball team, which recorded a season-high 15 hits against its Big Ten opponent on Wednesday but still managed to come up short.
It was an ugly weekend for the softball team; struggling bats and inconsistent pitching spoiled its first series at home and has forced it to play catch up in the Mid-American Conference.
The softball team wrapped up an eight-game homestand on Wednesday with a doubleheader against local adversary Niagara at Nan Harvey Field.After a disappointing start to the day in which the Bulls (15-25, 4-6 Mid-American Conference) fell to the Purple Eagles (12-14, 4-2 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference), 7-3, they rebounded in game two to down Niagara, 6-4.Bulls head coach Jennifer Teague was happy with her team for its resolve, but wasn't happy with the result of game one."You're always happy with rebounding back and winning a ballgame [after a tough loss]," Teague said.
Baseball
With spring breakers out of town for a week of sun and sand, the softball team continued play on the diamond as it traveled to the West Coast for two tournaments in a nine-day span.Starting in San Diego, Calif., the Bulls competed in the San Diego Classic and continued up the coast for the Long Beach State Tournament to round out the week.Head coach Jennifer Teague understands that her team didn't finish as well as it would have liked, but is convinced that facing fierce competition will only help prepare her squad for the end of the season."We went cold at the end of the week," Teague said.
Rain postponed the Cowgirl Classic last Friday, but when the softball team took the field the following morning for a triple-header, it took two games until the sun shined on the Bulls.
Solutions by The State News
