The softball team participated in the Panther Invitational hosted by Florida International University this past weekend. The team went 0-5 on the weekend, dropping three games against the host and two against Iowa.
This is the second tournament of the season under interim head coach Kelliner Croushore.
“Coach K has done a great job stepping up,” senior Mary Grace O’Neill said. “Obviously, it wasn’t the best timing for everything, but I think she’s done a good job just coaching us right from the start of the semester to now.”
O’Neill was also named Patriot League Player of the Week after having a batting average of .529 over the 5-game stretch.
“I was just really trying to get on base any way I could, swing at good pitches and not letting past at-bats that didn’t go my way, not dwelling on those,” she said. “Things were just falling in my favor this weekend.”
The first game on Friday was a 6-2 loss to FIU (9-7 overall). A scoreless first inning was followed by a 5-run second inning for the hosts as momentum shifted to the Panthers’ dugout. The Leopards added one in the third off of an error, but the Panthers quickly responded in the fourth with one run of their own. An RBI single from freshman infielder Caroline Hall in the seventh was the final tally in the game.
“We just want to pass the bat from one person to the next, each person not trying to do too much, and lean on each other,” Hall said. “Every person has a job to get done, and we want to do that to help the team.”
The following game against Iowa (10-3 overall) was much closer for the Leopards. Freshman pitcher Sophia Alvarez-Backus tossed six innings, allowing only two hits in a 2-0 loss. Both of the Hawkeyes’ scores came in the bottom of the fifth when two runners scored off of two separate fielder’s choices.
After a night’s rest, the Maroon and White resumed play on Saturday, facing off against Iowa again. This time, however, the Hawkeyes jumped out to a lead. After two scoreless innings, the Hawkeyes tallied four runs in the top of the third. The Leopards responded in the bottom of the inning with an O’Neill RBI single.
Iowa came back and scored four runs across the fifth and sixth innings, making the score 8-1. The Leopards refused to go down without a fight, scoring three runs to cut the final tally to 8-4.
Hall said that the performance proved that the team can hang around in big games.
“We can compete with those teams,” she said. “Now we just kind of have to take the next step towards getting the win.”
The final game of the day was against the host team, with FIU taking an 8-0 win. The fourth inning was the only inning in which the Panthers did not score, as the game ended in the fifth inning due to the eight-run mercy rule.
The Maroon and White faced FIU again in the last game of the tournament on Sunday. The Panthers once again secured a decisive win, finishing with a 6-1 victory. The sole run came from junior infielder Kylee Sweet as she recorded her first RBI of the season.
The Leopards will head to Clemson, South Carolina, this weekend for the Tiger Invitational, in which they will face off against Indiana University (10-3 overall), Clemson University (10-6 overall) and East Carolina University (8-5 overall).