Hofstra hosted Syracuse for a doubleheader on Tuesday and received a double dose of Erin.

Erin Gray and Erin Downey highlighted Syracuse softball’s 8-0 victory over Hofstra in the second game of the doubleheader. Gray hit her first home run of the season while Downey recorded her first shutout. Together, they helped the Orange compensate for a 3-0 loss in the first game.

Gray went 0-for-3 in the loss, continuing a sophomore slump. She entered the doubleheader with a .136 batting average and took the plate in the sixth inning of the second contest already 0-for-5. The Orange meagerly gripped a two-run advantage when Gray blasted a home run over the left-field fence.

‘I tried to calm down and not worry about anything,’ Gray said. ‘I haven’t really been playing well, so to start actually hitting the ball was good.’

She was humble in her description of the blast, insisting that the lead took the pressure out of the situation. Regardless, it had to help her mentally – the third baseman said that her mechanics were fine, and her lack of offense was more mental than anything else.

Head coach Mary Jo Firnbach isn’t worried. Firnbach praised Gray’s work ethic and improvements. She said Gray’s swing can look almost robotic at times – an ode to her commitment on mechanics. Gray has power potential that will continue to be nourished as she improves her contact.

Downey earned the win on the mound, and the first shutout of the freshman’s career while fanning 10 batters. She attributed the shutout to simply throwing hard — very hard.

‘I was throwing harder than usual,’ Downey said. ‘Some days you just throw harder than other days.’

Hofstra has a reputation of being a good offensive team that practices an upswing, which Firnbach describes as baseball-like. That style didn’t work against Downey, whose ‘riseball’ played tricks on the Pride batters. Perhaps it was reciprocation, because SU only managed four hits in the first game.

It was the second straight doubleheader where Syracuse’s bats were stagnant in the front end of the series and electric in the back end. Firnbach insisted the Orange hit the ball well in the first game, but it just never found the proper holes. In the second game, those hits slipped through, creating runs. As the runs mounted, so did the confidence.

‘A lot of times we come into games with people thinking so many different things,’ Downey said. ‘We need to focus on what we need to accomplish and not everything else. If we go in thinking about softball, we’ll be fine. In the second game, we’re like that and in the first game, we’re not.’

Firnbach admitted doubleheaders are just the nature of the game, and the team must prepare to play two games. Syracuse faces eleven more opponents, each date a doubleheader.

‘We have to keep focused for 4-6 hours,’ Firnbach said. ‘We’re trying to teach them that they have to be ready to play two games.’

Published on April 5, 2005 at 12:00 pm