Box Score 1 ST. BONIFACIUS, Minn. – The Carleton College softball team split a pair of non-conference games at Crown College on Saturday. The Knights extended their win streak to five games by capturing the opener by a 6-4 tally before absorbing an 11-10 (9 inn.) defeat in game two.
Madison Collins (Jr./Elmhurst, Ill./York),
Cassie Cunniff (So./Mt. Prospect, Ill./Prospect),
Maris Daleo (Sr./Rockford, Ill./Stillman Valley), and
Trina Eichel (Jr./Alameda, Calif./Alameda) each had five hits on the day.
GAME 1 RECAP
Carleton (10-14 overall) trailed 4-0 after two innings, but the Knights rallied back by scoring twice in each the third, fifth, and seventh innings to register their fifth consecutive victory.
In the third, Cunniff tripled and scored on Daleo's sacrifice fly.
Brooke McKelvey (Jr./West Linn, Ore./West Linn) then singled to left field and scored from first on Collins' double.
The fifth frame saw Eichel follow up McKelvey's two-out double with a RBI single. After an error extended the inning, Collins singled to right to chase home Eichel.
Collins and
Reagan Wills (Fy./Longmont, Colo./Niwot) had singles in the two-run seventh inning
Ally Norton (Fy./Norfolk, Mass./King Philip Regional) continued her solid rookie campaign and improved to 5-0 with the complete-game effort.
GAME 2 RECAP
Crown (7-21 overall) prevailed in a back-and-forth affair. Carleton had a season-high 17 hits but stranded a season-worst 11 runners and saw its win streak halted.
Eichel,
Laurie Avila (So./Sugar Grove, Ill./Oswego), Collins, and Cunniff all had two-out hits in a three-run top of the first. The Storm answered back with six runs in the bottom of the inning.
Both teams tallied an unearned run in the second, before Carleton moved back in front by scoring four times in the third inning. Collins doubled and scored on Cunniff's single.
Nikki Marsh (So./Salem, Conn./East Lyme) brought home one run, another scored via an error, and Daleo added a RBI single before the inning was over.
The Knights scored for the fourth consecutive inning, pushing two more runs across in the fourth via RBI singles from Collins and Wills. Crown responded with three runs in the bottom of the inning to level the score at 10-10.
Suddenly the red-hot offenses cooled off and neither side scored during the fifth through eighth innings, although Carleton had at least one baserunner aboard in each stanza.
Finally in the bottom of the ninth, back-to-back singles and an error set the stage for the game-winning sacrifice fly.
Emma Kartheiser (So./Oronoco, Minn./Century) had yielded only one hit over her previous 4.2 innings before the bottom of the ninth and took the hard-luck loss in relief.
UP NEXT FOR THE KNIGHTS
Carleton concludes the season with a Senior Day doubleheader against Saint Mary's University. First pitch from Ele Hansen Field is slated for 1 p.m.
