With their offense stagnating and three outs to go in Atlanta Saturday afternoon, the Washington University softball team faced the possibility of letting Emory University send them home with an unsatisfactory 1-3 record.

Less than an hour later, the Bears were heading home with their most thrilling victory of the season and a wholly satisfying four-game split.

After jumping out to a 6-0 lead through two frames in the series finale, Wash. U. didn’t expect to find itself down by two runs entering the top of the seventh inning. Then again, it didn’t expect to find itself in need of a comeback just to salvage the weekend set.

Senior Janet Taylor slides home during a game against Principia College last year. The Bears rallied from two shutout loses against Emory University to go 2-2 in their four-games series this weekend.

The Red and Green hadn’t lost two consecutive games since it lost a pair of nail-biters to ranked opponents in the opening weekend of the season. But that was exactly the position they found themselves in Friday when they were shut out twice, 5-0 and 7-0.

It would be difficult to find two more similar scripts to describe how the Bears dropped the first two games. In the opener, junior pitcher Anna McKee started and allowed five runs before junior Maggie Clapp finished the game without allowing a run. In the second game, Clapp started and allowed seven runs, while McKee put up zeros the rest of the way. In each game, the offense was lackluster, producing five hits, all singles.

According to head coach Michelle Venturella, the Bears—who were allowing Emory pitched Toko Miller to dictate at-bats—were unable to put up much of a fight.

“She did a great job,” Venturella said. “[Miller] definitely had our number, and she was just doing a good job of really putting it in on our hands. And then, she’d mix the away pitch. We just—we did not make the adjustment to back off the plate a little bit and have a really solid approach. I felt like we were swinging at her pitches, and I think she did a good job in setting us up.”

“My disappointment in our games on Saturday was a lot of the mental mistakes that we made and so we just talked about cleaning that part up and making sure that we stay focused,” she added. “I can take a loss as long as we play the game well, and I don’t feel like we played very well on Saturday.”

The Bears flipped the script to get things started Saturday. McKee delivered a magnificent performance, keeping Emory at bay for seven frames, although the lineup was finally able to get to the Eagles’ starter, knocking her out in the fourth. Wash. U. added a three-spot in the seventh to run away with it 8-0.

The finale looked like it would be an encore, as the Bears burst out to a 6-0 advantage after two innings. But Emory got four of those runs back quickly, knocking Clapp out of the game after three innings. McKee tried to slow things down in the fourth, but the Eagles scored four again to turn the deficit into an 8-6 lead.

Meanwhile, the offense flustered, going down in order in three straight innings, before leaving tying runs on base in the sixth.

Fast-forward to the seventh.

Because the Bears got two runners on the previous inning, they were able to send the top of the order to the dish to start things off. And start they did, with junior right fielder Ashley Madsen walking and senior left fielder Hannah Mehrle singling her to second. Senior Janet Taylor delivered a base hit up the middle, and Emory made a throwing error to allow both runners to score, and just like that, the game was knotted at eight.

Wash. U. didn’t waste any time in extras, setting up runners on the corners with two down for Mehrle, who was already two-for-three. Mehrle delivered the big hit to left field, McKee stranded two Eagles in the bottom frame, and Wash. U. had its sweetest victory of the season.

“I think one thing that’s nice is [that] we’ve had different people at different times come through, and so no matter who is up, I think our team feels like we can get it done,” Venturella said.

Looking ahead, the Bears have four more four-game series over the next month, starting at the University of Chicago next weekend. For the most part, Venturella has used just two pitchers all season—McKee and Clapp have combined for 115.2 of the Red and Green’s 124 innings—but with a bunch of doubleheaders and back-to-backs on the radar, that may have to change.

“It just depends,” Venturella said. “There are certain things that every team has to work around: the challenges of a season. And our roster’s small; we’ve been without a couple people and they have some injuries to deal with, so right now I’ve been very pleased with Anna McKee and Maggie Clapp doing a good job of complementing each other…I think we have some depth that we can go to on the mound, which is nice, but again, we just have to put the best team out there.”