College Softball
Lehigh University 12, Rider University 1 / 5 innings
Rider University 3, Lehigh University 2
LAWRENCEVILLE?Officially the Bronc softball team will celebrate senior day on Sunday, prior to the final home game of the 2008 season. Unofficially, they celebrated a few days early and it could not have come at a better time. Two hours after making five errors and losing to Lehigh by 11 runs, the four Rider seniors stepped up and led Rider to a win in the night cap and a spilt in the non-conference doubleheader against the Mountain Hawks at Herb and Joan Young Field on Wednesday afternoon.
“The second game was a much better game,” said head coach Tricia Carroll. “Jessica and Lauren combined to pitch a good game. Lehigh is pretty good so getting a split under normal circumstances is good and especially after the first game, we needed to win the second game.”
Trailing 1-0 in game two, Rider (10-22) scored three times in the bottom of the first inning on back to back RBI doubles by seniors Tiffany Day-Neutill (Agoura Hills, Calif./Oaks Christian) and Aimee Schiller (Moreno Valley, Calif./Moreno Valley).
Senior Mandi Sekly (Canyon Country, Calif./Canyon) followed with an RBI single to give the Broncs a 3-1 lead, in support of starting pitcher senior Jessica Holland (Hatboro, Pa./Hatboro-Horsham) who went four innings, allowing only one earned run while scattering nine hits.
“After the first game, we couldn't wait to get the second game started,” said Holland. “We wanted to pick ourselves up after playing the way we did.”
“Jessica and Lauren won't over power anyone,” said Carroll. “They both did a nice job keeping Lehigh off balance. We rely on getting the pitchers to make the hitters hit a ball that the defense can handle. We did a good job of that in the second game.”
“With a good hitting team like Lehigh, I had to go more off speed,” said Holland. “We needed to keep them off balance so they couldn't sit on any pitches.”
Junior Lauren Brunner (Chino, Calif./Chino) picking up the save with three innings of one-hit relief, recording two strikeouts.
Day-Neutill and sophomore Derrin Minunni (Cohoes, N.Y./Shaker) each had two hits in the second game with Minunni adding a double. Day-Neutill scored twice in the doubleheader and now has 99 runs scored in her career. Day-Neutill's two hits give her 188 in her career, one behind Terry Gillespie for sixth (189 hits) and two behind Dawn Fantini (190 hits) for fifth place all-time at Rider.
In the what can go wrong did go wrong category, a Rider rally in the third inning was squelched when after back to back hits put runners at first and third, Schiller lined the ball to the shortstop who threw to third and with the runner going from first on the play, the Mountain Hawks threw across the diamond for an inning ending triple play.
“I've never had a triple play, for or against us,” Carroll added. “Never seen a 10 run inning, never seen a triple play, it was a day of firsts.”
Lehigh had a chance to tie the game in the fourth inning. After scoring a run to cut the Rider lead to 3-2, Day-Neutill fielded a single up the middle just beyond the infield and gunned down the Mountain Hawk runner trying to score from second.
In the opener, junior Katy Mills (Seattle, Wash./Mount Rainier) had an RBI single to keep the Broncs from getting shutout.
Rider committed four errors in the first inning, leading to 10 Lehigh runs, all unearned. “In all of my years coaching, I've never had 10 runs scored on my team in one inning,” said Carroll. “It was embarrassing not only to us but to the game of softball. We got down and then it got ugly. After that inning, we only gave up two runs the rest of the game and only gave up two runs in the second game so we did turn it around.”
The Broncs host Marist on Saturday in a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference doubleheader at 1:00pm. “Hopefully we'll get some of the injured players back for the weekend,” Carroll added. “I'm excited about the weekend,” Holland said. “We had a positive game two today and we need to take that momentum into the weekend.”
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