The ninth annual Capital Classic softball tournament began withconfusion on Thursday, and saw Sac State drop the first of two games inthe opening round of pool play.

Following a delay due to mis-measured pitching mounds, the Hornets, whocame into the tourney 8-9 overall, took the field against New Mexicowith sophomore Gina Steenburgen on the mound.

Steenburgen, who has been struggling to recover from a stress fracturein her wrist, pitched four innings until fatigue set in and the injurystarted to nag at her. Freshman Nicole Deatherage relieved Steenburgenand held the Lobos scoreless until the seventh inning when she gave upan RBI single to Elena Cranmer, resulting in the game’s only run.

“New Mexico is probably the best team in our pool and I thought weplayed really well,” Strahan said. “We had some opportunities to score,but just couldn?t get any runs across.”Sophomore first baseman Jillian Bivert went two for three in the 1-0loss.

In the nightcap, the flood gates opened on the Hornets as they fell toTexas A Corpus Christi, 12-6. Bivert started on the mound for theHornets and battled to a 6-6 tie until she was replaced by Deatherage inthe fifth inning. Things went downhill from there as an outfield errorcombined with a breakdown in pitching led to the defeat.

“We are so young on the mound and it is hard to get consistency out ofthem,” Strahan said. “We can’t expect our offense to put up eight or 10runs a game to keep us in it.”The controversy to the start of the tournament came in the first inningof the Iowa-BYU game. The BYU coaches requested that the distancebetween the pitcher?s mound and home plate be measured. By rule thedistance is supposed to be set at 43 feet, but in this case the moundwas set at 46 feet, putting the tournament grounds crew to work on animmediate replacement. The word of the measuring mistake traveled aroundthe other three fields of the Sacramento Softball Complex in a hurry,and the distance of all the other mounds were re-evaluated. It was foundthat the other fields were also mis-measured. They, however, were at ashorter distance of 40 feet.

“I was scouting a team on one of the fields when word got out that thepitching rubber could possible be set wrong,” head coach Kathy Strahansaid. “Luckily they caught it in the first inning of each game so itdidn?t cause much of an uproar.”

The grounds crew of the complex fixed the problem and each game wasresumed where it had left off though due to the delay, Thursday’s actiondidn’t end until 12:30 a.m.

“When you get a delay in a tournament like that it throws everything offthe rest of the day,” Strahan said. “You have to account for games goinginto extra innings without a delay and that sets things back, but whenthere is a delay as well, it really makes things rough.”

The complex serves as a home to many recreational slow pitch softballteams, as well as numerous high school games. Each level has differentdimensions for their field which could be what caused a problem.

“We have to rent the complex each year and we specifically state thedimensions that we require,” Strahan said. “All of the players andcoaches were really great about the situation and the issue wasresolved.”