Macon, Ga. – Inclement weather shuffled around this weekend's schedule but the Fordham softball team still won its lone Friday contest, 4-3, against Ball State, going ahead in the top of the seventh inning on freshman
Sarah Taffet's first career RBI. With the win, the Rams improve to 7-12 on the year, while the Cardinals fall to 18-10 overall.
"Aughie did a great job holding a powerful offensive team at bay and Mak did a great job coming in to close the game," Head coach
Melissa Inouye said, "Defensively, we made some big plays that kept them from getting anything going offensively. In the seventh, we had some scrappy at-bats and found a way to produce some runs. Overall a great team win."
Fordham tallied just three hits and a walk but produced a couple of timely hits and took advantage of five Ball State errors to secure the win. An error plated the Rams', and the game's, first run when Hailey Demnianiuk's errant throw allowed
Julia Martine, running for
Madie Aughinbaugh, to score in the fifth with two outs. The Cardinals struck back in the bottom-half of the inning, however, when Mackenzie McCarty hit a solo home run off of Aughinbaugh.
Maria Trivelpiece led off the sixth with a single and stole second to give the Rams a chance at going ahead but she was left stranded at third.
Makenzie McGrath came on in relief on Aughinbaugh and set down the Cardinals in order. Aughinbaugh led off the seventh by reaching on an error by Demnianiuk and was replaced by
Brianna Pinto at first, who advanced to second on a fielder's choice off the bat of
Rachel Hubertus.
Two batters later, Taffet struck to put Fordham up, lining a 0-1 offering the other way. Taffet and Hubertus advanced a base on a wild pitch and
Deanna Burbridge's groundout scored the latter. Trivelpiece then produced what wound up as the game-winning run with an infield single in an 0-2 count. Ball State threatened and got within one against McGrath in the final inning. With two outs, the Cardinals plated two runs on an RBI single and an error by Taffet at short but McGrath was able to strike out Stacy Payton to end the game.
McGrath earned her second win of the year in relief by allowing just two runs, one earned, on two hits and a walk, with two strikeouts, over her two frames. Aughinbaugh allowed just the one run on three hits and a walk, with a pair of strikeouts, over five innings. Ball State's Aeshia Miles suffered the loss with four unearned runs on three hits and a walk.
Chelsea Skrepenak, who tripled, Taffet, and Trivelpiece all notched one hit apiece, with the latter also walking and stealing a base in the contest.
The Rams are back in action tomorrow with two games, first against Connecticut at 9 a.m. and then the hosts, Mercer, at 1:30 p.m. They'll wrap up the weekend with another game against Ball State on Sunday at 9 a.m.
