By Jill Campbell
Staff Writer
After two lengthy games with a combined seventeen innings of play, the Springfield College Pride and the Western Connecticut Colonials each walked away with a victory on Wednesday afternoon at Potter Field.
The first game went to Western with a score of 7-6 after nine innings of play, then the Pride took the second after eight innings with a final score of 3-2.
Springfield now has an overall record of 11-7.
There were a total of four extra base hits in game one, with doubles belonging to Mackenzie Navarro and Jenna Webb, and triples belonging to Kayla Padroff and Talia Loda. Loda also had a solid performance in the circle, allowing four runs in six innings of work.
The Pride jumped on the board first in the bottom of the third when Loda hit a ball into the right-center gap and ended up on third base, later being bunted home by Navarro.
The Colonials answered back in the next inning with a 2-run homer from Kayla Nowak. However this only fueled a rally from the Pride, who tacked on another two runs as the result of speedy base-running, small ball, and fielding errors.
Two more went up on the board for Springfield in the fifth after a sacrifice fly by Sam Cox scored Webb, and Padroff’s triple brought home Kirsten Drobiak.
The battle continued in the sixth and the seventh when Western plated 3, bringing the score to 5-5 and sending the game into extra innings.
The Colonials helped their cause with a run in the top of the eighth, which would prove to be useless after a long double from Navarro which scored one and tied things back up again.
However things came to a close when Western scored a lone run in the ninth that the Pride could not answer to. The final score was 7-6.
The Pride’s win in the second game was credited largely to the pitching performance of junior Nicole Cring, who allowed just three hits and two runs in 6 innings, as well as junior Jordyn Moquin who pitched the last two innings and allowed only a single hit.
After five scoreless innings for both teams, Western got on the board with a double plating two.
Springfield replied in the bottom of the seventh, when a fielding error and a single from Drobiak brought two in and evened the score once again. Western had no response in their next at bat.
It was crunch time. The Pride knew what they had to do, and knew that they had the skills to do it. Head coach Julie Perrelli reminded her team of this amidst all the chaos.
“I told them, ‘We’ve seen her and we know what she’s got. We know that we’re a great hitting team. So let’s take care of business right here.’”
Then, in the bottom of the eighth, with two outs, a full count, and bases loaded, senior Melissa Nelson did just that. Nelson lasered a ball past the third basemen and sent the Pride into celebration mode, bringing them to victory and a final score of 3-2.