In the warm-up before Friday's game against Chico State, the softball Gators weren't swinging bats. Instead they were wielding shovels and heaving bags of sand.

Thursday's storm had made such a mess of SF State's softball field that when head coach Cristina Bryne turned up early Friday morning, water submerged most of the infield and mud covered large swaths of the outfield.

"If you'd seen the field at 6 a.m. when I first got out here, I don't think you would have given it a chance," said Bryne, shortly after hopping off an all-terrain vehicle she had used flatten the diamond.

But Bryne and her team did give it a chance—which is just as well: after the entire team team pitched in to help return the field to a playable condition, the Gators swept the Wildcats (7-9, 2-4 CCAA) by scores of 7-6 and 2-1. They improve to 2-4 in conference play (10-8 overall).

"This was huge for us to play this team at home and get two conference wins," Bryne said. "You can't beat that."

The Gators wasted no time filling up the scoresheet. In the opening inning of the first of a four-game series, catcher Kelsey Wood smashed a two-run homer.

Later in the day with game two in its third inning and tied at one apiece, the umpires suspended the contest for bad light. When play resumed the following morning, freshman Esquibel finished the game with a walk-off homer.

Two more games were scheduled for Saturday, but with a much-hyped storm looming, the umpires and school officials opted to play them later in the season—a decision that disappointed the Gators, considering the two wins and the effort that went into getting the field ready.

"Yeah, it's disappointing," freshman pitcher Ashley Jackson said. "But if we had started and not been able to finish, it would have been even more of a bummer."

Coach Bryne used all three Gator pitchers in the two-game series, with Jackson collecting her fourth win on the back of three strike-outs in game two's nine innings.

"[Jackson] did a great job in that second game of really shutting it down," Bryne said. "For a freshman to step up and throw a complete game against a very good hitting team was huge."

Also key to the Gators' success this weekend was Jackson's dad, David Jackson.

Mr. Jackson, a concrete contractor, drove by the field at around 8 a.m. when he saw coach Bryne frantically toiling at the waterlogged playing surface, trying to dry it out so the series could be played.

"I was checking a job out, and noticed that [Bryne] was out here by herself and felt sorry for her," said Mr. Jackson, who returned to his office to fetch two workers and a heavy-duty vacuum cleaner. "I've been out here ever since trying to get it ready."

Mr. Jackson used the vacuum cleaner to suck water off the diamond, and when the Gators showed up in full uniform to warm up at 11 a.m, they got to work dumping buckets of dry dirt onto the playing surface to soak up the mud. Others helped fill a gaping hole in the outfield as the Chico Wildcats looked on quizzically.

"It looked pretty disgusting when we got here," Kendra Wood said. "Right field was just a mud pile. We just took out all the mud in the hole and put in sand in its place. It's not really grass right now, but at least it's covered. ... We just really want to play these games."