VIERA WEST, Fla. – The Carleton College softball team started its Spring Break trip with a pair of victories on Wednesday, topping Western Connecticut State 9-0 before besting Rutgers-Newark by a 9-1 tally.
"The team came out strong after a long travel day and battling some wind for our first outdoors games of the season," said Carleton head coach
Amy Erickson. "We did a really good job of continually making adjustments throughout as we faced opponents we knew very little about before these games."
Carleton 9, WestConn 0
Sydney Trentman (4-0) and
Becca Madsen combined on a three-hit shutout. Trentman tossed the opening 5.0 frames, allowing two hits and no walks with six strikeouts. Madsen followed with 2.0 innings of one-hit relief.
Samantha Rodriguez paced Carleton's season-best 14-hit attack with a career-high 4-for-4 game, including three runs scored and an RBI.
Esme Song,
Andriana Wiggins, and
Gloria Hronek also had multi-hit games.
The Knights (6-2) provided all the run support that Trentman and Madsen would need with a three-run top of the second.
Gloria Hronek walked with one out and raced home on
Natasha Paez's triple to center field. Rodriguez followed with an RBI single and later scored on a wild pitch.
Adriana Wiggins added a two-run single in the sixth inning before the Knights pushed across four more tallies in the seventh. Hronek doubled home the first run of that inning and scored on an error.
Esme Song followed hits by Rodriguez and
Megan Smith with a two-run single to right field.
Carleton 9, Rutgers-Newark 1 (5 inn.)
The Knights ran their win streak to four games after pushing across three runs apiece in the first, second and fourth frames. That was more than enough support for
Rachel Block, who notched her first victory of the season.
Singles by Song and Wiggins preceded a walk to
Grace Colburn and a sacrifice fly by
Jade Thach. The Knights benefitted from a two-out error that permitted two more runs to score.
The Scarlet Raiders (1-6) got a run back in the second inning, thanks to a leadoff double by Maddy Haack and a single off the bat of Janiyah Smith. Carleton responded with three more runs in the bottom of the frame. Hronek and Smith had back-to-back one-out singles, Wiggins produced a two-out RBI single before Colburn tacked on a two-run single.
The home half of the fourth inning saw Smith triple,
Angelina Wu draw a walk, before Wiggins smacked a two-out double to center field. Two batters later, Thach completed the scoring with a single to right center.
Wiggins concluded the game 3-for-3 with three runs scored and three RBI.
Block yielded the one run on five hits with two walks and two strikeouts over her 5.0 innings of work.
Up Next for the Knights
Carleton faces Webster University (10:00 a.m. ET) and Dallas Christian College (2:30 p.m. ET) on Friday, March 20.
