It was a picturesque day for softball on March 11 in Rocklin, California, but Santa Rosa Junior College couldn’t capture a victory.

The Bear Cubs struggled with fundamentals and dropped both games of a doubleheader at league-leading Sierra College, the first by a score of 10-2. SRJC was shut out in the second contest, 8-0.

“We’ve got to execute,” said head coach Phil Wright. “We had glimpses of goodness and then we had too many mental mistakes.”

SRJC [1-4, 4-12] scored its only runs of the day with a two-out rally in the sixth inning of game one.

Kaylah Pardini reached base on an error and Sarah Knight followed with a pinch hit single to right field to put runners on first and third. Zoe Hoover smacked the ball to second, forcing an error that scored Pardini. Kiana Hurd worked the count in her first at bat of the day and hit the ball to first base, forcing another Sierra error. Knight crossed home to make the score 6-2.

All hopes were lost in the bottom of the sixth though, when SRJC’s defense erred twice to put Sierra’s first two runners on base.

Freshman starting pitcher Hallie Short couldn’t stop what the errors had started.

Sierra [7-1, 18-3] hit a two-run double and more missteps by SRJC allowed Sierra to extend its lead to 10-2, ending the game due to the eight run difference rule.

With ten freshman and just three sophomores, Wright said that nearly everything is new to his young team.

“It’s a mental process. We just have to get better,” he said.

The second game started poorly for Santa Rosa. SRJC went down in order in the first, and sophomore pitcher Cailyn Callison and the defense allowed three runs in the second. The game ended when Sierra scored its eighth run in the bottom of the fifth.

“No matter how many runs we can save, if we don’t score one then we’re not going to win the game,” said Hoover, a sophomore catcher. “We just need one solid hit in the grass and we would have runs and it would be a totally different ballgame.”

Wright made sure to single out Hurd, a freshman outfielder, for her improved hitting and Short for inducing ground balls from the mound.

“We need to work on our defense and put some runs on the board so we can have room for errors if we make them,” Short said.

Wright plans to emphasize fundamentals during practice.

“We gotta play catch and we gotta hit the ball,” he said.

The Bear Cubs are back in action at San Joaquin Delta on Tuesday March 14, and come home for a doubleheader versus Folsom Lake March 18 with the first game starting at noon.