It was a week of mixed results for the softball team as the girls played 7.5 games in a week ? winning two games and dropping five over that stretch. The weekend wouldn’t have been complete without weather problems as a downpour cancelled Saturday’s rematch against Keuka College outright and ended Sunday’s second game against D’Youville College early with UR leading 6-2 in the third inning.
The highlight of the week of action was a no-hit shutout pitched by sophomore Kathy Gagne and freshman Melissa McDonald against D’Youville College Sunday afternoon and an upset victory over St. John Fisher College Thursday.
Senior and co-captain catcher Kathy Krivickas hailed the no-hitter as an amazing accomplishment.
Gagne and McDonald’s no-no is an amazing achievement. They are very rare,” she said. “We had a great chemistry going that day and everything just flowed, it was great.”
The team lost a heartbreaker Wednesday afternoon to SUNY-Brockport, as Brockport scored two runs in the top half of the seventh inning with two outs to beat the Yellowjackets 4-3.
“The first game [against Brockport] was a tough loss,” senior and co-captain shortstop Nellie Coats said, “but, I’m impressed with the way the team pulled together after Tuesday’s game.”
The girls were demolished by a hot-hitting Cazenovia in action Tuesday.
After the week of games, the team’s record stands at 7-16 heading into the conference portion of their schedule over the next several weeks. To qualify and attend states, the girls need to win the Upstate Collegiate Athletic Conference and finish the season with a record at .500 or better. The team has to win 14 of its next 17 games to finish with a .500 record.
“I know that we have what it takes to qualify for states as long as we keep the same focus in the next couple of weeks that we had against Fisher and RIT. We’re looking forward to taking some wins this weekend in our conference games,” Coats said.
The split with Fisher was an accomplishment for the Yellowjackets. UR ended Fisher’s 15-game win streak, upending them 2-1.
In the first game, UR had trouble stringing any offense together.
“They were able to hit the ball hard and string them together,” Gagne said. “We hit the ball hard but things just didn’t come together at the right time.”
UR didn’t have a lot of offense in game two either, but they had enough at the right time to win the game. Sophomore first baseman Tracy Simon singled home the winning run in with two outs in the seventh inning.
Saturday’s game against Keuka was rained out and will be replayed at UR on May 1.
UR’s pitching and offense shined Sunday as the Yellowjackets demolished D’Youville 6-0 in game one and was well en route to doing so again in game two before Mother Nature intervened on D’Youville’s behalf ending the game 6-2 in the top of the third inning.
Gagne pitched six innings and McDonald finished the seventh as they combined to face two batters over the minimum as they no-hit D’Youville.
Tuesday’s games left little to be desired as Cazenovia beat the Yellowjackets 9-1 and 12-0.
“Caz hit the ball pretty hard [and] we couldn’t get our bats going and they have a really strong offense,” Coats said.
Wednesday night’s game was a really difficult loss for the Yellowjackets as they played run-for-run with Brockport throughout the first game ultimately succumbing to Brockport 4-3. The second game wasn’t so close as Brockport won 11-3.
“We were hitting the right spots,” Gagne said. “If they hit it, there wasn’t really anything we could do.”
The girls continue their condensed schedule this week as they go on the road to face Skidmore and Union College this weekend and Hamilton College next Tuesday. The girls play their next home game next Wednesday against SUNY Fredonia.
Gagne said the team’s goal is to string together a long winning streak to bring their overall record closer to the .500 mark
“We’re ten times better than we were last year. I know we can take [the conference],” she said.
Hildebrandt can be reached at thildebrandt@campustimes.org.
