The softballing Gators' first foray into conference play was full of surprises.

Some were good, some not so.

Having beaten the nationally ranked Humboldt State Lumberjacks in a non-conference tourney a week prior, this weekend the Gators had another shot at stunning the conference champions—and this time it would count.

They lost all four games, 11-1, 7-0, 6-2 and 5-3, to fall 2-6 overall and 0-4 in the California Collegiate Athletic Association.

But sometimes scorelines can deceive—even those containing zeros, ones and 11s.

"I think we played pretty well," said coach Cristine Bryne, who noted her team committed just one error in the four defeats at Humboldt. "I know we can play better, but we definitely didn't beat ourselves, which is huge at this stage."

The Gators came out swinging Friday Freshman Kendra Wood hit a homer in her first-ever inning in her first-ever conference game, to put the Gators 1-0 up in the first game of the series.

"It was really cool—I wasn't really expecting it," said Wood, who then smashed another out of the park in game four. "It was nice to get my first out of the way. There's no pressure now."

Junior Monica Amburgey also hit her first career home run the following day in game three, and freshman Lea Cardenas slugged one in game four.

Sure, the long balls don’t always win games, but for Bryne they show her team can swing.

"We get down to 1-0, then we come back and score two home runs," Bryne said of the 6-2 loss in game four. "That's part of the game I wasn't expecting—I was expecting us to score with singles and doubles. It was kind of a good surprise."

Despite Friday's lopsided scores, Byrne said her Gators battled hard, shutting out the Lumberjacks until the fourth inning in both games.

Defense will be key for this young team, which is made up of eight freshmen.

"I would take our defense over any team's defense any day," Bryne said. "We showed that when we put the ball on the ground, they made two errors in row and all of a sudden we had base runners."

On Feb. 9, Wood did her stuff all over again by hitting a home run to open game three. But the lead lasted about half an inning, when Humboldt proved why they are conference champs.

“They just starting hitting the ball,” Bryne said. “They're a good hitting team, which is why they're ranked sixth in the nation, and they do have that ability to come back and hit the ball.”

Humboldt had a homer and stole a base on their way to pouring in three runs in their first inning, before hitting a couple of doubles in the third to add another two runs.

The Gators managed a two-run rally in the fifth, thanks to a couple of wild pitches and keeping their hits on the ground, but it wasn’t enough.

And in the final game of the series, it took Humboldt a five-run fifth inning to roll back a single-run Gator lead keyed by Cardenas' and Wood’s homers.

“I think the biggest thing we learned this weekend is we need to execute—and swing the bat,” Amburgey said. “We had a lot of strike-outs this weekend so we need to put the ball into play and make their defense work. When we did do that, we scored.”

In preparation for this weekend’s tourney in Phoenix, Ariz.— where they’ll face non-conference schools, Texas A&M, Western New Mexico and Notre Dame de Namur—the Gators have been focused on rebuilding confidence and getting back to the basics, like hitting singles and doubles.

But if the homers come, that’s nice too.

“I think our practice is going to help put [the weekend] behind us,” Wood said. “If we just come out here and practice the way we know how, and forget about what happened and learn from it … we'll do better.”

Amburgey agreed.

“It will be good to work on things and hopefully pick up some wins to get our confidence back,” she said. “It was good to get the number one team (Humboldt State) out of the way, though.”

The Gators play their first home game of the season against non-conference Biola University on Feb. 18.