Skip to navigation Skip to content Skip to footer

Beavers win four in a row with sweep of Defiance, Rochester

Posted: Apr 21, 2003

By Tim Stried
April 21, 2003 

With two double-header sweeps last week, the Bluffton College softball team has now won four games in a row as the regular season begins to wind down and the Beavers aim to peak as the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference tournament nears.

Bluffton will travel to Manchester on April 24 in its final HCAC double-header of the season before returning home for a non-league affair with Case Western Reserve on April 26 to wrap up the regular season. The HCAC tournament, hosted by The College of Mount St. Joseph this season, will get underway May 2.

Last week's action at Marbeck Field saw Bluffton sweep a pair of games from rival Defiance on Wednesday by the final scores of 7-0 and 4-3, then take two games from Rochester on Friday by 8-0 and 5-1 decisions. The Beavers are now 13-17 overall and 5-7 in the HCAC.

Defiance visited Bluffton on Wednesday having won five of its last six games, but the Beavers defended their home turf with a pair of wins thanks to some timely hitting and outstanding defensive. In the first game, Bluffton erupted for seven runs in the sixth inning and freshman Sarah Betts pitched a three-hit shutout with five strikeouts. In the sixth, sophomore Allison Lange led off BC's offensive display with a single and later scored, then was back in the batters' box 15 minutes later, still in the sixth, and added a two-RBI double to cap off a 3-for-4 performance in the game.

In game two, Defiance scored three runs in the top of the fourth inning to take a 3-1 lead, but sophomore Lane Leedy delivered a single that produced two runs in the bottom of the fourth to tie the score at 3-3. Sophomore Mandy Snider then came through with the game winning RBI with a single in the fifth inning that scored Lange, and Betts pitched the final 3.1 innings in relief of sophomore Jenny Lehman to earn her eighth win of the season.

Betts improved to 9-7 and struck out seven of the 11 batters she faced on Friday as Bluffton drilled Rochester 8-0 in the first game of a double-header. Lange went 3-for-4 and Snider was 2-for-2 to lead the offense.

In the second game against Rochester, Lange led off the bottom of the first inning with a solo homerun, her third of the season, which ties the Bluffton single-season HR record held by Jessica Spain in 2001 and Elizabeth Snavely in 1999. Lehman scattered five hits to earn her third win of the season, while sophomore Becky Heller and freshmen Kate Barringer and Lindsay Miller all contributed two hits each.