HAVERFORD, Pa. – For most of both games, pitching dominated in the Haverford College softball team's Centennial Conference split Thursday afternoon with visiting Dickinson College as the Fords nabbed a, 1-0, win in the opener but the Red Devils answered back with a, 3-1, victory in the nightcap.
Haverford's overall record moves to 8-8 and its conference mark to 2-2 while Dickinson moves to 9-12 and 2-2.
Cassandra Searls (5-2) started in the pitching circle and posted a dominating performance in Haverford's Game 1 win surrendering just two hits and a walk with three strikeouts in six innings of work. Maggie Cronin came in for Searls to start the seventh and earned the save (1) with a 1-2-3 inning.
Dickinson starter Liz Barry (1-6) wasn't far behind Searls as she allowed one unearned run on four Haverford hits and one walk with six strikeouts.
The Fords dealt Barry the fatal blow in the bottom of the second inning after Alison Crawford reached base on a fielding miscue to start the frame off. A single by Laura Iwaynk and a walk to Laina Gagliardi moved Crawford to third with no outs.
Barry's biggest, but in a way her slightest, mistake of the game came when she hit the next batter, Gabrielle Sapienza, to push Crawford across the plate for the game's only run. Barry closed out the inning without allowing another run but the damage had been done, especially with Searls and Cronin in the circle.
Searls allowed baserunners in just three innings and had to quiet a threat in only the fifth. The senior hurler is already just one win shy of her single season best of six victories during her sophomore campaign.
Fireworks opened up Game 2 as the Red Devils got a one-out single from Erin King followed by a home run over the right field fence by Emma Murtaugh to put a pair of runs up on the Dickinson side of the scoreboard, erasing the zero that had lit up its face from before Game 1.
The Fords answered back and halved the lead in the bottom of the inning with a two-out rally. Searls singled then came all the way around to score on Crawford's slicing double down the left field line.
That would be Haverford's only run of the game, however, as Dickinson's Allison Jordan (4-2) spread out five more hits over the next six innings, fighting out of jams in the third and fifth to earn the win.
Haverford starter Lisa Karmel (3-6) cheated the Devils in each of the next three innings after Murtaugh's slam. She got out of the second without allowing a run with a runner on third and one out, escaped a scoreless third with runners left on first and second, and snuck out of a one-run fifth after Dickinson loaded the bases with one out and four consecutive hits.
Cronin came on for Karmel in the top of the fifth inning and posted another strong outing allowing just one hit batter and one walk to the 10 batters she faced.
At the plate for Haverford, Crawford picked up a single in the fourth for her second hit of the game but no other Ford was able to get more than one hit off Jordan.
The Fords will travel to McDaniel College for their next outing, a league doubleheader Saturday afternoon beginning at 1 p.m.