By Kaleb Knowles
With the chilly wind ripping across the field and cutting through the maroon and white pinstriped jerseys of the Springfield College Softball team throughout the entirety of an already rescheduled double header due to the all too known early New England frigid spring temperatures. Julia Rimshnick faced runners at the corner and the Salve Regina Seahawks, knocking on the door of more runs in the top half of the third inning after they had already stretched across two. After a brief conference with her catcher behind the dish, Aurora Levesque. Rimshnick settled in and delivered a perfectly placed fastball high enough to get the Seahawks’ first baseman, Madeleine Oswald, to roll over into a routine inning-ending groundout.
“She’s really important to our team,” head coach Sam Garcia said after a commanding 8-2 sweep in the double header over the Seahawks, “When she gets going, the rest of the team just wants to play behind her, and I think she adds more confidence to our defense.”
Despite playing one day later than scheduled, there were no Sunday scaries for Springfield as they handled the first game in a mercy rule fashion, five innings 11-0, following it up nicely on Diane L. Potter Field with back-to-back wins. They now boost their record on the season to 10-3 and have won their first two NEWMAC conference games of the season.
“All of our wins so far have been confidence builders,” Amelia DeRosa, who has a team-best .525 batting average on the season, said, “This once again proves we’re making improvements and correcting mistakes.”
DeRosa had another stellar weekend, whether it was at the plate where she had three more hits across the doubleheader, or on the mound in game one, where she threw a complete game shutout and allowed just two hits through the five-inning game. But it’s not only that; in game two, DeRosa went from pitching to playing at the hot corner, where she made multiple nice plays. One of which came in the top half of the fourth, where on a sharp ground ball, DeRosa glided over to her left side, throwing across the diamond to get the runner by a step.
“Thank you for stretching. That ball got stuck in my glove.” DeRosa yelled after the play to her first baseman Kate Katsetos, who had stretched out into a full split to dig the ball out of the turf.
“I enjoy pitching the first game because I have the most energy, so I can lock in,” DeRosa added, “It takes a lot out of me mentally when I’m pitching, more so than third base, because that involves more reacting.”
Springfield scored three runs in the first inning of game two and never trailed, even when things looked dicey in the top half of the third inning. After a total of 19 runs in two games, 6 of those total runs came from the excellent play of Katsetos. She followed a 3-for-3 first game with another hit and run scored in the second game as well, including a nice hit to the left side of the infield where she legged out an infield single just barely beating the throw from the Seahawks shortstop Gracie Keyes.
“I tried to do what I always do,” Katsetos remarked, “I stay confident and lucky that I have teammates that are always supporting me, whether I go 3 for 3 or whether I go 0 for 3.”
A bond that is always noticeable on the field as Springfield College starts its season with an impressive 10-3 record. No matter if the team is struggling to score runs or piling it on like they were today, the women are always cheering and supporting each other in a game surrounded by so much failure.
The Pride gets geared to play their first official road game of the season as they travel down the road to play their cross-town rivals, Western New England, for another doubleheader on Tuesday.
Photo courtesy of Springfield College Athletics