Big Weekend For the Cougars

Seniors Will Play In Their Final Home Games of the Season

PROVO -- The BYU softball team (28-15, 5-6) will host New Mexico (29-26, 3-8) on Friday, April 30 at starting at 4 p.m. and Colorado State (33-12, 9-3) on Saturday, May 1 starting at 2 p.m. These games will be the final home games of the 2004 softball season.

"This is a huge weekend for us," BYU head coach Gordon Eakin said. "If we can take care of business at home this weekend, we'll at least be in a position to win the conference."

Seniors Lindsey Gerhauser, Belinda Osborn and Kate Walker will play in their final home games of their BYU careers at Gail Miller Field this weekend.

The Cougars are coming off a 4-1 record last week as they swept Utah Valley State College 8-2, 11-1, knocked off No. 23 Pacific in a 8-0 shutout, and split with conference rival Utah L 11-10 (8 innings), W 13-0. Overall on the week, eight batters hit .300 or better including five who were .500 or better.

Paige Paramore led BYU in batting average hitting .625 (10-16) in the five games to extend her hitting streak to 12 games with a hit.

Ianeta Le`i, named MWC Player of the Week on April 27, also played solid for BYU during the week by batting .500 (9-18). She had an impressive performance against Utah (second game) hitting 4-4 at the plate with a triple and two homers. Le`i also knocked seven RBI, which set a new BYU single-game record, breaking the previous record of five RBI in a game.

Pitcher Brooke Boyce (11-6) posted a 3-0 record including two shutout games against Pacific and Utah. Niki Andersen (14-6) split, picking up a win over UVSC and a close loss to Utah in extra innings.

As a team, BYU is batting .311 and is registering a 3.28 ERA as a pitching staff. Six batters are batting over .300 including Paige Paramore (.369), Ianeta Le`i (.368), Kate Walker (.358), Debbie Dodds (.337), Jodi Norton (.330) and Ashlyn Russell (.300).

Paramore leads the team in hits (45), while Le`i leads the team in runs scored (31), RBI (30) and walks (23). Norton has a team-high 11 doubles, Watson notches a team-high four triples and Russell has nailed a team-high nine homers. Krystle Chamberlain leads the Cougars in stolen bases going 10-for-11.

For the pitching staff, Niki Andersen leads the team in innings pitched (124.1), strikeouts (103) and a 14-6 record. Brooke Boyce posts a 2.64 ERA, an 11-6 record with 43 strikeouts in 109.0 innings pitched, while Ariel Capra posts a 5.40 ERA, a 3-3 record with 22 strikeouts in 51.2 innings pitched.

The first CSU game will have a live audio broadcast, a link is available on the BYU softball schedule page. All games will have live stats also available.

BYU Remaining Softball Schedule
April 30  New Mexico (DH)  Home  4 p.m./ 6 p.m.
May 1     CSU (DH)         Home  2 p.m./ 4 p.m.
May 4     Utah State (DH)  Away  2 p.m./ 4 p.m.
May 6     UNLV             Away  5 p.m./ 7 p.m.
May 8     SDSU (DH)        Away  1 p.m./ 3 p.m.
May 13-15 MWC Championships @ CSU TBA