AUBURN, Ala. – The Auburn softball team opened its 2019 fall exhibition schedule with a dominating win against Gulf Coast State College.
The two teams were originally scheduled to play two seven-inning games on Sunday, but that was changed to a single 15-inning game. However, the game ended after the bottom of the 12th.
"Today was good," said head coach Mickey Dean. "We got a lot done. We did a lot of good things today. There was good energy and that made it a lot of fun."
Five Auburn pitchers took the circle with Ashlee Swindle and Lexie Handley pacing the quintet with three innings apiece while combing for four strikeouts and allowing only two hits. Newcomers Bailee Dempsey, Samantha Yarbrough and Hannah Cavanaugh threw two innings each and allowed only three hits combined.
"Each pitcher has a lot of good things they did and a couple things they can work on," Dean said. "This gives us an opportunity to go back and really breakdown each pitcher."
At the plate, Auburn finished the exhibition game with 28 hits. Eight different players recorded multiple hits with Alyssa Rivera and Tyler King having three each. 19 of the 21 players with at least one at-bat had at least one hit. Additionally, 12 Tigers had run-scoring hits throughout the contest.
Freshman Lindsey Garcia drew a team-high three walks in four at-bats in five innings of game action.
"We didn't hit a single home run today, but we won by hitting line drives and really, really good base running," Dean said. "We took extra bases when we had an opportunity and that was a lot of fun to watch."
Auburn will return to action next Saturday when the Tigers take on Pensacola State and Snead State at 1:30 and 4:00 p.m., respectively.