The softball team dropped all three of its matches in a weekend series at Boston University, finishing the season on an eight-game losing streak and missing the Patriot League tournament.
Saturday’s doubleheader saw the Leopards (5-13 Patriot League, 7-31 overall) get off to a slow start, ceding a three-run frame to the Terriers (14-4 Patriot League, 36-17 overall) in the second inning.
The Maroon and White mounted their first resistance in the top of the fourth, as sophomore catcher Regan Dillon doubled to bring home freshman infielder Emma Ahlborn for the team’s first run of the game.
“It was really just my approach,” Dillon said. “I knew what pitches she was going to come at me with, and really just attacking a pitch that I thought I could crush and scoring a run when we needed it.”
Unfortunately for the Leopards, the Terriers rallied off two more three-run innings in the fourth and sixth en route to a 9-1 mercy rule victory. Boston outhit the Maroon and White 11-4 in the first contest.
“They’re good at hitting the mistake,” interim head coach Kelliner Croushoure said. “That’s what you can’t afford as a pitcher.”
In the second half of Saturday’s doubleheader, the two teams remained scoreless through the first three innings before the Terriers again poured on a three-run inning in the fourth.
While the Leopards’ pitching and outfielding tightened up, limiting the Terriers to just eight hits, the team again struggled on the plate, recording just two hits between Dillon and senior outfielder Mary Grace O’Neill en route to a 5-0 shutout.
“Once we settled in and just trusted it, we saw the improvement from game to game,” Croushore said. “They started to play more like themselves.”
The Leopards had one more chance at the win column on Sunday. Despite playing clean softball for most of the contest, the Maroon and White surrendered a four-run fifth inning en route to another 5-0 defeat.
“Until the last week of Patriot League play, we were in the tournament,” Dillon said. “We’re close. We’re much closer than we’ve been in the years past, and just taking what we built this year and continue to build on it next year.”
After a hectic start to the season that saw a last-minute resignation from former head coach Karavin Dew and a lengthy losing streak to start the season, the Leopards finished the 2025 campaign with their most conference wins since 2017.
“It has definitely been a wild ride,” Croushore said. “They could have pouted or been sad about it, but they said, ‘No, we’re not going to be defined by this. We’re going to rise above, we’re going to trust it. It’s going to happen.’ And it happened.”
Croushore noted that the team was going to have to transition in the absence of its graduating seniors, particularly with the loss of O’Neill, who finished second in the Patriot League in batting average at .423.
“MG had a stellar senior year,” Croushore said, referring to O’Neill. “MG has instilled this amazing drive and work ethic and quiet confidence, and she just grinds.”
“I think there’s so many individuals that have shown growth from last year to this year, and we are still a really young team,” Dillon said. “I think that collective experience will really show next year.”
