SOFTBALL: Cyclones aim to end 7 game losing streak

Iowa State’s Courtney Wray swings during the Cyclones’ game against Nebraska on Tuesday. Photo: Logan Gaedke/Iowa State Daily

Logan Gaedke

Iowa State’s Courtney Wray swings during the Cyclones’ game against Nebraska on Tuesday. Photo: Logan Gaedke/Iowa State Daily

Leah Hansen —

The Cyclones are trying to put Tuesday’s 10-0 loss to Nebraska behind them and are hoping to have a good workout in practice before heading to Lincoln.

Round two against the Cornhuskers starts at 5 p.m. Thursday.

Iowa State, in the midst of a seven-game losing streak, has run into trouble in the Big 12 season, battling sickness and injury along with general inconsistency.

During the losing streak, the Cyclones’ only fully healthy pitcher has seen her ERA rise from 1.87 to 2.57. They have also sputtered offensively, scoring just seven runs during the seven-game skid.

The Cyclones know each individual player has something to work on, and they are expecting a lot of work to be done during Wednesday’s practice.

“I think everyone is coming to practice with something specific that they have to work on from the previous games, like this weekend and today, so tomorrow in practice everyone should have something to work on and hopefully things will go better for the game on Thursday,” said junior Courtney Wray after Iowa State’s recent loss to Nebraska.

Wray was the lone regular starter in the infield on Tuesday for the first game of the series with Nebraska as coach Stacy Gemeinhardt-Cesler elected to shake up the lineup, trying to fire up her team.

Wray got on base twice for the Cyclones, accounting for half of their base runners in the game. But even Wray feels like she needs to get to work in practice this week.

“Personally, I’m going to be working on hitting change-ups because that’s my weakness, and there were a lot thrown in the games this weekend and I got one today, actually,” Wray said after Tuesday’s loss.

Gemeinhardt-Cesler, who said that the starting lineup will depend on players’ attitudes in practice this week, hopes everyone comes ready to work and helps build some stability going into Thursday.

“I think that we need to come to practice tomorrow ready to work on the things we’ve been doing wrong,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said. “We need to try to fix what we can tomorrow and feel as comfortable as we can going into Thursday and just go and let it rip.”

Iowa State definitely has some changes to make and they are working on trying to find where those changes need to take place.

“Offensively, we need to make some adjustments,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said. “It’s not any one thing specifically. If we go through the lineup, everybody has things that they’re working on.”