This post was written by Hatchet reporter Mark Eisenhauer
After falling to Howard Friday, the softball team turned things around this weekend at the Colonials Tournament, picking up three solid wins against Binghamton, Howard, and Wagner while tying Mount St. Mary’s in its final game.
After dropping 13 of their first 14 road games, GW’s first six home games were either cancelled or postponed. The well-rested squad was anxious to prove they were better than what their 1-13 record indicated.
“I don’t think those first 14 games phased us in a negative way at all,” senior pitcher Courtney Martin said. “We were playing the best competition we’d ever played before so it was definitely a great learning experience. What we took away from it was knowing that we can compete with those big teams if we are able to bring it on every aspect of the game.”
Friday’s game against Howard was a close one and despite good pitching performances by both Martin and sophomore Meghan Rico, the Colonials dropped the contest 2-1. In three innings of work, Martin gave up two earned runs on one hit, but allowed four walks. Rico would allow just four hits in her four innings of relief.
The Colonials turned the page Saturday, as batters started to produce runs and the aces on the mound continued their success. Down by two in the first game against Binghamton, a fifth-inning rally started by a single from sophomore Carlee Gray propelled the team to a 5-2 win, with freshmen Megan Linn, Mary Wiley and junior Victoria Valos each bringing in a run. On the mound, Martin pitched a complete game, striking out four, while only allowing four total hits.
Linn began Saturday’s rematch against Howard with a bang. Leading the team in hits with 20, she launched her first collegiate home run to give GW a quick lead in the first inning.
“[Hitting the home run] felt great,” Linn said. “I just saw that first pitch and it was right there so I swung and it went.”
GW would lead by as much as six runs, and would eventually take the win 6-1. Rico followed the solid performance of Martin by throwing a complete game of her own, striking out five en route to her first win of the season.
The offense kept coming in Sunday’s opening game against Wagner College, and GW was catapulted to an 8-3 win behind strong freshman performances. Wiley led the GW offense, finishing the game 3-for-3 with one RBI, while Linn went 2-for-4 with two RBI’s.
The final game of the weekend against Mount St. Mary’s was back and forth. Martin was replaced by Rico after just two innings, allowing one run and four hits, but GW held on and scored a pair of runs to bring the game to a 2-2 tie by the end of seventh. In extra innings, Mount St. Mary’s scored three runs in the top of the ninth, creating a tough deficit for the Colonials to reverse in the bottom half of the inning. But as GW went for their last at-bats, the umpires were forced to call the game on account of darkness, ultimately resulting in the game’s 2-2 tie.
Despite the season’s early struggles at the plate, GW proved this weekend that it can produce runs, with much of the offense this weekend coming off the bats of freshmen and sophomores.
“The more experienced players have taught me how important it is to do your job,” Linn said. “If there are runners on base its my job to bring them in, and if there’s no one on base its my job to get on.”
But the team still has a long way to go to climb out of the early season hole they dug themselves.
Said Martin, “We can still be a little more executed offensively in terms of base running, that’s kind of our biggest weakness right now. We are running ourselves out of runs…If we keep working on that and our pitching and limiting walks we’ll be able to take some big steps in the right direction.”
GW continues play in the Colonials Tournament Monday with two games against Mount St. Mary’s at 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.
