Lawrie's pep talk sparks UW softball turnaround

Apr 24, 2009, 12:00 AM

They had just escaped with another extra-inning, 1-0 victory. But this win for the Washington softball team came against Oregon State, the Pac-10's seventh-place team, and UW ace Danielle Lawrie, who had worked all nine innings that day, wasn't satisfied with what she had seen the entire weekend. So she decided to issue her teammates a reminder of exactly what is expected when they put on a Husky uniform, delivering an impromptu speech after UW's Saturday squeaker against the Beavers. "I think I finally got to the point where I was like, 'I don't want to pitch nine innings when I don't need to,'" Lawrie said about her motivational speech. "Pump yourself up, get motivated, let everyone know that you're into it ... it's just got to be done. We have to have energy, we have to score runs. If we don't score runs, we'll be pitching nine, 10, 11 innings, and I shouldn't have to throw that much." The result: 11 hits and seven runs against the same OSU team the next day, a 7-1 win for Washington that came in the style many were expecting out of a Husky team that has been inconsistent at the plate this season. "Saturday ... there were a couple times when they got runners on with none out, and I was thinking, 'Man, if we lose this game, I'm going to be very upset because we shouldn't have,'" Lawrie said. "And that's when I said, 'You know what, it's time to let people know how I read the game, what I'm going to do and what I expect.' And any of the older girls, especially, have the right to let people know how we want this team ran." Lawrie said that she didn't feel as if her team's energy was where it needed to be, but that the difference during Sunday's win was noticeable. Players giving high-fives and cheering in the dugout, Lawrie said, are little things that they haven't been doing as much as they should this season. UW head coach Heather Tarr said the message was needed and certainly not uncharacteristic of Lawrie, who has long been one of the Huskies' main vocal leaders. "It was basically Danielle just saying, 'Look, we need to put it all out there. Play with emotion,'" Tarr said. "And she kind of pointed at the seniors and said, 'This is the last time you get to play. Let's go.'" If energy really was the problem, the Huskies seemed to regain theirs at the right time. They'll head to the desert today for a game against Arizona State before playing Pac-10 leader Arizona twice to end the weekend. "If there isn't energy, if there isn't something, I'm going to talk to the girls and get them into it," Lawrie said. "Because I'm taking it as my role to have to get people in the right mindset to go." Reach sports editor Christian Caple at sports@dailyuw.com.

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