TEMPE – Facing a roster that amounts to what is essentially an NCAA All-Star team from the last several years, the Arizona State University softball team held its own against the National Pro Fastpitch’s three-time champion USSSA Pride on Thursday evening in a hard-fought 6-2 defeat at Farrington Stadium in Tempe.
Nikki Girard went 1-for-3 with a home run and a couple highlight reel stabs at second base while Kelsey Kessler pitched 3.2 innings of one-run softball with four strikeouts in the contest.
The Sun Devils finished with a solid nine hits in the contest but struggled to bring runs home, going 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position.
Much of that was in large part to a familiar face in Sun Devil legend and three-time All-American Dallas Escobedo, who pitched four innings of scoreless softball as a guest pitcher for the Pride. Escobedo allowed no runs on six hits with four strikeouts and a walk in front of the 1,323 fans that gave her a rousing ovation when she took the circle to start the game.
The Pride did just about all of their damage in one inning, scoring five in the top of the third off of starting pitcher Breanna Macha. The sophomore went 2.1 innings with five earned runs on five hits.
Amanda Kamekona got things going with a solo bomb for the Pride’d first hit of the game. An RBI single and a bases-loaded walk would make it 3-0 before GiOnna DiSalvatore’s two-run single to make it 5-0.
Macha was then relieved by Kessler with one out in the top of the third and the redshirt junior shut down the Pride scoring surge, getting out of a bases loaded jam with no further damage done.
Kessler, who sat out last season after transferring from Kansas, was exceptional against a Pride roster that featured nearly 30 combined All-America honors, an Olympic silver medalist and NPF Player of the Year in Andrea Durant, the 2014 NCAA Player of the Year and National Champion Hannah Rogers and a general slew of to most elite of the elite players in the game from the past decade.
Kessler struck out four and her only blemish came on a solo shot from DiSalvatore in the top of the fifth that made it 6-0. Kessler got herself out of another bases loaded situation in the fourth inning and kept the Pride on their toes with a range of pitches.
ASU got on the board on Girard’s two-run homer off Rogers in the bottom of the sixth inning and had runners on base in each inning of the contest and simply struggled to advance or bring home those runners.
All told, it was an impressive outing from a Sun Devil squad that has only been practicing for a little more than a week this Fall compared to the elite professional team it faced that has been playing throughout the entire summer.
ASU will resume its Fall Ball campaign tomorrow with its annual Alumni Game at 7 p.m. at Farrington Stadium. Admission to the contest is free of charge.