Although there’s still a while before the season begins for NIU’s softball team, Dee Abrahamson’s squad played for almost eight-straight hours last Saturday.

The Huskie Hundred, an annual fund-raising event for the team, sent the girls out onto the field for 100-straight innings of fun under the sun against faculty and staff in the morning and alumni in the afternoon.

“The object was to just have a good time,” Abrahamson said. “Our players got to play a lot of different positions and get out, play the game and raise some money.”

Although the team didn’t fare well—they lost 81-31—the Huskies did manage to collect almost $6,000, which will help pay for their graduate assistant’s salary and their spring trip to Arizona, and hopefully, if there is enough left, make improvements on the softball field.

The game went smoothly under better conditions than could be asked for.

The pitching duties were handled by a machine, and to make the game go faster, everyone got only three pitches per at-bat with a strikeout being the end result of a foul ball on the third pitch.

Unfortunately, the Huskies showed little power with no one on the team hitting one out.

This proved to be most disastrous because their opposition could and did. The final count was nine round trippers for the staff and alumni and zero for the Huskies.

The game ended around five, just in time for dinner. And after that much time in spikes, win or lose, you can bet that there were plenty of smiles and relief just to finally get some rest.

In the end, it will all seem worth it when they are relaxing in sunny Arizona next spring.