Jefferson P. Nolan
jnolan@mustangdaily.net
Before each game, Kim Westlund puts her left sock on before her right and her right shoe on before her left. She wears her headphones on the bus to the game and will not take them off until she steps onto the field.
The junior shortstop says the same phrase to herself every time before she steps in the batter’s box.
“Base hit, get to one.”
Some may call it superstition. But for Westlund and the Cal Poly softball team, it’s not crazy if it works.
“We all are supposed to have a routine because it’s a mental sport,” junior outfielder Cami Brown said. “It may seem a little excessive, but it really helps put you in a state of calmness. I always try and have the same breakfast and some Starbucks before every game.”
And on Friday’s 2013 season opener at the Arizona State-hosted Kajikawa Classic, it was apparent that the Mustangs (1-4) had stuck to the routine.
In her first game in a Cal Poly uniform, center fielder Lauren Moreno belted a walk-off home run against the New Mexico Lobos (0-7) to notch the team’s first victory of the season.
The Mustangs were held hitless until the fifth inning when Ashley Romano reached first base on an error by New Mexico second baseman Chelsea Anaya. Westlund, a 2012 All-Big West Conference second-team selection, was able to draw a walk to put runners in scoring position. After a hit batter, sophomore infielder Celina Lafrades slapped a single to right field to score Romano and Westlund, to put the Mustangs in the lead 2-1. New Mexico responded with a run in the seventh, but Moreno’s walk-off sealed the victory for Cal Poly.
“We just need to go out every day and compete from the minute we step onto the field,” head coach Jenny Condon said. “If we take care of the controllables, I think that we’re going to have a lot more success. The kids have committed; they’ve bought into the program and bought into what we’re asking them to do. That’s what we’ve asked them to do, and that’s what they’ve brought every single day.”
The Mustangs proceeded to fall to Western Michigan in the second game of their double-header on Friday. On Saturday, the softball squad fell to Arizona 10-3 and later was defeated by No. 21 Stanford, 7-6 in nine innings.
Against the Cardinal, it was freshman infielder Breana West‘s ninth inning run-scoring single that gave the Mustangs the go-ahead run. Stanford, however, responded by scoring twice in the bottom half of the inning for a walk-off victory.
Sunday yielded similar results when Westlund’s three hits against San Jose State were not enough to give the Mustangs an edge as they lost 3-2 to the Spartans.
Now facing a four-game losing streak, the Cal Poly coaching staff sees its losses as a learning experience.
“We’re trying to hold them to a standard,” first-year assistant coach Gina Vecchione said. “You’re going to make physical mistakes, but it’s the mental mistakes and doing the little things. You’ve got to do the fundamentals. That’s what we’re holding the standard to.”
Vecchione previously coached at UCLA and led the Bruins softball team to three national championships. She came to Cal Poly to replace previous assistant coach Linda Garza, who took the headcoaching job at UC Riverside. With Vecchione on staff, the team has a new perspective on how they approach each game.
“It’s a great culture here now,” Vecchione said. “The kids are buying in, and we’re going in the right direction. You’ve got to create that culture. You don’t win championships and then the culture just happens. You have to create that hardworking, positive, family-type culture and the kids have to really buy into that and know that you’re in it with them.”
After finishing last season seventh in conference, the coach’s poll selected the Cal Poly softball team to finish seventh in the Big West in its 2013 season.
“Personally, it kind of fills your fire,” Westlund said. “We don’t have a target on our back, so we get to go out there and prove people wrong. We were really young the past two years. Now, we have a lot of experience. We have to take that and run with that and go into conference with confidence with our head’s up knowing that anybody can beat anybody in our conference.”
The softball team will attempt to improve its record when they take on Kentucky at the Campbell/Cartier Classic on Thursday.