March 15, 2010
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – Two Notre Dame softball juniors were honored by the BIG EAST Conference with its top weekly awards, as announced by the league on Monday.
Outfielder Sadie Pitzenberger earned her first career Player of the Week award while Jody Valdivia won Pitcher of the Week honors for the second time this season. Heather Johnson (March 1) and Christine Lux (March 8) also won the award as the league’s top player of the week earlier in the year. This marks the first sweep by a pair of teammates.
Pitzenberger hit .476 over six games for the Fighting Irish while Valdivia was dominant in the circle, boasting a 0.22 ERA over five appearances for a 5-0 record.
Pitzenberger fit the mold of a prototypical leadoff hitter perfectly for Notre Dame, reaching base safely in all six games this week to extend her team-best hitting streak to 16 games. In her six leadoff at-bats to start each game for the Irish, the outfielder tallied three triples, a double, a hit-by-pitch and only one groundout. She finished the week 10-of-21 at the plate with five runs, two RBI, two doubles and three triples. She had three multi-hit games while boasting a .500 on-base percentage and a slugging percentage of .857.
Valdivia earned five wins in five appearances. Her week included three shutouts and three one-hit efforts, as she has now been victorious in each of her last 11 decisions. The righty took no-hitters into the seventh inning against Cal State Northridge and Purdue. In each of those games she struck out nine batters. Valdivia also struck out 10 against UNLV. The Notre Dame hurler finished the week with 40 strikeouts over 31.1 innings pitched.
–ND–