Lopes lose to No. 10 Arizona in extras

Wednesday, March 19

Phoenix, Ariz.

7 p.m.

Grand Canyon

22-4

#10 Arizona

27-4

Arizona

Grand Canyon

Photo by: Jack Gilday

3/19/2025 11:00:00 PM | Softball

Box Score Photo Gallery

Seventh-inning heroics from Gomez extends game

By: Braden Dohrmann

Grand Canyon fell in extra innings to the tenth-ranked Arizona Wildcats Wednesday evening at GCU Softball Stadium.

GCU (22-4) trailed most of the game before seventh-inning heroics tied the game with Arizona (27-4), bringing Grand Canyon into its first extra-inning situation of the season.

After six innings of scoreless offense from the Lopes, graduate outfielder Makaiya Gomez sent a two-run deep drive to right field to tie the game at two in the bottom of the seventh.

Gomez now has seven home runs on the season, three of them with a "clutch" tag. Gomez's solo homer against Oregon State was the difference in GCU's 1-0 win over OSU. She also went yard to help propel the Lopes over Arizona State.

Grand Canyon had one hit through the first five innings. That hit led the game off for GCU, when sophomore second baseman Savannah Kirk singled to third base and eventually stole second.

Kirk extended her hitting streak to 16 games and had two hits on the night. She was stranded in the first after a pair of strikeouts and a ground out left her on second.

Five pitchers contributed to the pitching effort for GCU. The staff only allowed two runs in the first seven innings, with another five across in the eighth. Only two of those runs were earned.

Junior Taryn Batterton started in the circle and eventually re-entered to stop the bleeding in the eighth. She went four innings in total. Sophomore Maggie Place had the most impressive effort, facing the minimum in the fourth and fifth innings.

Arizona manufactured a run in the third inning via a two-out walk, an infield single and a single off the ankle of Batterton that brought Arizona's Tayler Biehl home. The Wildcats scored in a loud way in the seventh inning with a towering solo shot to center field from Miranda Stoddard.

In the bottom half of the inning, junior first baseman Emily Gonzalez led the inning off by taking a hit by pitch. After Cooper reached on a fielder's choice to the shortstop, Gomez did the rest.

As the game moved to extras, Lopes fans who had not seen extra innings all season were greeted with the international tiebreaker, or a runner placed on second base to begin the inning. Senior Emily Darwin was in the circle after finishing out the seventh inning. Arizona then went to work.

A leadoff triple that looked like a single off the bat, had some serious spin on the ball and shot by GCU left fielder Mia Weckel, bringing Arizona's Biehl to third base and giving the Wildcats a 3-2 lead.

Two errors followed that up and extended the Arizona lead to 7-2 when the top-half of the eighth finally concluded.

Sophomore shortstop Mackenzie Nolan, who had a magnificent game at shortstop defensively, scored Tinley Lucas on a single up the middle in the bottom of the eighth to make the score 7-3. Nolan, like her middle-infielder counterpart Kirk, also had two hits on the night.

The program had history made in the stands, as Lopes fans broke the all-time attendance record that dated back to February 9, 2018 against No. 1 Oklahoma. The stadium debuted just a day before on February 8. 1,687 fans attended Wednesday's game, breaking the record from 2018 of 1,403.

GCU is back in action at home over the weekend when Tarleton State comes to town for a three-game set. The two teams will play a doubleheader on Friday and a single game Saturday.