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Show Lady T-birds face Critical Weekend A pair of important doubleheaders on the road this weekend could determine deter-mine the fate of the Southern Utah State College women's Softball team. The T-Birds challenge Adams State Friday in a pair of games, then move over to Western State for two contests against Western State. Games will be played in Alamosa, Colorado, Friday and in Gunnison, Colorado, Saturday. None of the games, will have any direct bearing on ' the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championship, but all four are vital to the Thunderbird hopes of entering en-tering regional competition. Regionals determine entrants en-trants into national competition. com-petition. "These are games which can make or break us," Val Peterson, SUSC coach explains. "If we can win all four, it will be difficult to keep us from finishing high in the regional standings." SUSC started the week with a 4-2 record against region teams. Overall the 'Birds have a 5-4 record. "Errors, some of them mental, are hurting us right now," Peterson explains. "We have a pretty good hitting and adequate pitching, pit-ching, but we can't afford as many errors as we have been giving up lately." SUSC is averaging 5.9 errors per game. As a team, SUSC's women bat .255, with three hitters averaging over .300. Second baseman Bonnie Cahill leads the team with a lofty .473 average and a slugging percentage of .842 (slugging percentage is a measure of power hitting). Also over .300 are shortstop short-stop Susan Pedersen (.323) and center Denice Long in runs scored (8), and is tied with Marcia Whiting in doubles (4). Cahill is tops in runs batted in (9) and home runs (1). First baseman Pam Beckstrand has the most triples (3) for the team. "We haven't heard much about how the other teams in the region are doing," Peterson said. "We do know, however, that Western State won the conference tournament tour-nament last year; that would indicate that they have a good program." In action last week against regional teams, the Thunderbirds Thun-derbirds lost two games (5-4 and 6-3) to Colorado State University and won a pair (10-7 and 9-3) over New Mexico Highlands University. Next home action for SUSC is Tuesday, April 15, when Dixie College is scheduled for a doubleheader on the SUSC diamond. |