NORTHFIELD, Minn. – On Senior Day, the Carleton College softball team split a pair of games with Macalester College, rallying to win game one, 11-10, before dropping game two by a 5-4 score.
Prior to first pitch, the Knights celebrated the six seniors on the roster:
Laurie Avila (Sr./Sugar Grove, Ill./Oswego),
Cassie Cunniff (Sr./Mt. Prospect, Ill./Prospect),
Faith Hanshaw (Sr./The Woodlands, Texas/The Woodlands Christian Academy),
Emma Kartheiser (Sr./Oronoco, Minn./Century),
Nikki Marsh (Sr./Salem, Conn./East Lyme), and
Hala Soliman (Sr./Harrisburg, N.C./Lake Norman Charter).
Game 1 Recap
Carleton 11, Macalester 10
All six seniors contributed to the Knights' victory. Soliman picked up the win, pitching 5.0 innings of relief. Cunniff went 3-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBI, Kartheiser added a three-run triple, Marsh drove in two more runs, and Avila was 1-for-2 with two walks and two runs scored. Hanshaw came in defensively to play the final three innings at first base.
The Knights took the early lead, with
Bryanna Schaffer (So./San Diego, Calif./Mar Vista) driving home Cunniff with an RBI single in the first inning.
Adriana Wiggins (Fy./Long Beach, Calif./Wilson) followed with a run-scoring single, and Kartheiser's bases-loaded triple capped the five-run frame.
The Scots scored four runs in the top of the second before Cunniff hit a bomb to left field for her sixth home run of the season, tying her for tops among MIAC players this season.
Macalester responded with five more tallies in the top of the third to take a 9-6 lead.
Marsh's two-out, two-run single in the bottom of the fourth helped close the gap, but the Scots got one of those runs back in the top of the fifth.
In the bottom of that frame,
Helen Moses (Jr./Denver, Colo./Denver East) doubled with one out, and the Knights strung together three more singles, including Wiggins' go-ahead two-run singled up the middle.
Soliman shut down the Scots' bats in the sixth and seventh innings to clinch the win.
Cunniff, Schaffer, and Wiggins were a combined 8-for-12 with seven runs scored and six RBI.
Game 2 Recap
Macalester 5, Carleton 4
Hanshaw tossed her staff-leading eighth complete game of the campaign, yielding four earned runs.
Macalester scored an unearned run in the first inning and added two more tallies in the third to build a 3-0 lead.
Schaffer hit a two-run double to left field in the bottom of the third, before the Knights tied it on Avila's RBI single in the fifth.
After giving up two runs in the top of the seventh, the Knights pulled one back when Wiggins scored on a wild pitch in the seventh, but Carleton left Schaffer on third to end the game and take its fifth one-run loss of the year.
Cunniff, Schaffer, Moses, and
Grace Colburn (Fy./Bainbridge Island, Wash./Bainbridge) each had two hits for Carleton.
Up Next for the Knights
Carleton is slated to travel to Moorhead, Minn., for a doubleheader against Concordia College-Moorhead. First pitch is scheduled for 1:00 p.m.
