Late Runs Make the Difference as Softball Splits Doubleheader at Ursinus

Ashley Sisto
Ashley Sisto

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – The Haverford College softball team (22-10-2, 9-3-2 CC) racked up an impressive 11-1 victory in just six innings during its game one victory at Ursinus on Tuesday afternoon. However, the host Bears (18-14-1, 8-5 CC) answered that challenge with a 7-2 win in game two as the two sides split the Centennial Conference doubleheader.

During both ends of the doubleheader, all of the offense came in the later innings. Haverford and Ursinus were locked in a 0-0 deadlock after three innings to start the day while game two went scoreless into the fourth inning. The Fords provided the first offense of game one as they scored three times in the fourth, three times in the fifth, and put the run-rule into play with a five-run sixth inning.

Each of Haverford's first seven hitters in the lineup had at least one hit during game one, highlighted by 3-for-4 games from both Rachel Wolfson and Ashley Sisto. Reigning Centennial Conference Player of the Week Emma Souter and Marybeth Stone each had two hits and scored three runs. Stone also matched Sisto with a game-high four runs driven in. It was Sisto's two-run double during the fourth that capped the Fords' inning after Wolfson had earlier driven in a run on an RBI knock.

Stone and Sisto both had RBI hits in the fifth as the Fords made it 6-1 after four and a half innings. Haverford's big blow in the sixth inning was a bases clearing three-run double from Stone. Julia Blake and Wolfson also had doubles in that half inning as RBI hits from Wolfson and Sisto made it an 11-1 Haverford lead before Temma Levis retired the side in order to pick up her program-record 13th victory of the season. Levis went the distance and scattered just five hits over her six innings of work while her only run surrendered came when Ursinus strung together three of its five hits during the fourth inning. Prior to that inning, Levis had started the game by retiring eight straight and nine of the first 10 batters that she faced.

Unfortunately for the Fords, the big inning in game two belonged to Ursinus as the Bears scored five times in the bottom of the fifth to give the Fords a big hole to dig out of. A walk and hit by pitch set up that inning before the Bears brought five runs around on the strength of four hits. The Fords got onto the scoreboard with another RBI hit from Marybeth Stone in the sixth as she drove in Blake who started the inning with a single up the middle. Sisto also started Haverford's half of the seventh with a double and came around to score on a defensive miscue in the eventual 7-2 Ursinus win.