SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. – The Shippensburg University softball team played two seesaw games with Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) Eastern Division rival East Stroudsburg on Saturday and ended up on the winning end of each one, posting 6-5 and 10-7 victories over the Warriors in action from sunny and windy Robb Field.
In both games, Shippensburg (4-4, 3-3 PSAC East) established multi-run leads over East Stroudsburg (5-3, 2-2) but relinquished them. Despite losing the leads, the Raiders put forth their own rallies to re-gain an advantage and ultimately stave off the Warriors to achieve a split of the four-game weekend series.
Shippensburg's offense totaled 23 hits in the doubleheader (five for extra bases), hitting .390 as a team, and drew seven walks. Four Raiders had four hits on the day, with freshman
Maelynn Leber going 4-for-6 with doubles and five RBIs. Fellow freshman
Taylor Myers was 4-for-6 with an RBI, a walk, two sacrifices and four runs scored.
Freshman
Alyssa Nehlen had four hits, including a triple and an RBI-single, and scored four times. Freshman
Taylor Radziewicz had four hits, including a double, two RBIs and two runs scored. Freshman
Toni Jones contributed three hits.
Freshman
Emma Flattery worked in relief in both games and ended up with the win in both games. Flattery threw four hitless innings of relief, allowing just one base runner (a hit batter in the seventh inning of Game 2).
Game 1
East Stroudsburg scored runs in each of the first two innings against sophomore
Tressa Kagarise, an RBI-groundout in the first and an RBI-double in the second. SU answered with a run in the bottom of the second on a sacrifice fly by sophomore
Hannah Johnson.
The Raiders scored single runs in the second, third, fourth and fifth innings to build a 4-2 lead. Nehlen tripled in the third and scored on an RBI-single by Radziewicz. Myers singled in a run in the fourth, and Jones singled in a run in the fifth.
The Warriors had an eventful sixth inning, scoring three times against an SU pitching carousel to take a 5-4 lead. A one-out double chased Kagarise, leading to freshman
Hanna Phillips coming out of the bullpen. Phillips walked two and threw a wild pitch, resulting in Kagarise re-entering three batters after she left.
A two-run single by leadoff batter Molly Nies tied the score, and an RBI- double by Reilly Vicendese gave ESU the lead. On the Vicendese double, however, a runner was thrown out at home plate on a successful relay by sophomore left fielder
Lacey Hunter to Jones at catcher. An infield single followed, and Flattery came in and induced a groundout to end the inning.
In the bottom of the sixth, SU got one-out singles from Myers and Nehlen. With two outs, Radziewicz walked on four pitches to load the bases. Leber then came to the plate and singled into left field, plating two runs to give SU the decisive 6-5 lead.
Shippensburg had four two-out hits (five RBIs) in the win.
Game 2
The Raiders took a 6-0 lead after two innings in the opener – including four runs in the bottom of the first. Nehlen and Radziewicz delivered RBI-singles before Leber, the Game 2 starting pitcher, hit a two-run double.
In the second, sophomore
Morgan DeFeo and Myers led off with singles before Nehlen worked a 13-pitch walk to load the bases. Sophomore
Hannah Marsteller then battled to an RBI with a 12-pitch walk that scored DeFeo. Marsteller fouled off five consecutive pitches at one point in the at-bat. Leber delivered an RBI-single with one out, but ESU evaded further damage with a fielder's choice out at home and a strikeout to strand the bases loaded.
The Warriors then inched back with a run in the third and two unearned runs in the fourth. A four-run fifth inning gave ESU a 7-6 lead, as a throwing error in a rundown at home plate prefaced a three-run homer by Ashley Spencer.
SU immediately answered in the bottom of the fifth. DeFeo singled and Myers reached on an error on a sacrifice bunt. Nehlen was hit by an 0-2 pitch, and Marsteller then deposited the first pitch of her at-bat well over the left-field fence for a grand slam. Flattery then retired six of the final seven ESU batters to cement the win.
Marsteller has opened the season on an eight-game hitting streak and has an extra-base hit in 7-of-8 games. This week, in six games, Marsteller was 8-for-20 with two home runs, four doubles and seven RBIs.
Up Next
Shippensburg travels to Bloomsburg on Tuesday for a 2 p.m. league doubleheader with the Huskies. The games were rescheduled from two weeks ago when weather and field conditions necessitated a postponement.
