The Elizabethtown College softball team played two games against Juniata on April 25 on their home field. Senior Lindsey Cooper knocked in senior Courtney Comstock with an RBI single up the middle at the bottom of the first, giving the Jays an early lead. Comstock was first on base after being hit by a pitch. Senior Whitney Breneman moved Comstock to second with a sacrifice bunt and Cooper stepped in and brought her home for the team’s first run.
E-town would get two more runs throughout the game while sophomore Laura Tomasetti and sophomore Justyna Pepkowski shut out Juniata. Tomasetti pitched 6.1 innings before Pepkowski took over in the seventh. Pepkowski gave up a single to load the bases with only one out in the inning, going for her first save of the season. However, she came back and struck out the final two batters to end the game, with a score of 3-0 to E-town. Cooper finished as the only batter with multiple hits for E-town. She was 2-for-4 with two RBI’s.
Pepkowski got right back at it in the second game as she struck out a career high eight batters in the complete game win. Juniata took the lead in the second game, but E-town was quick to tie it up in the bottom half of the inning. Junior Amanda Sheckard brought one road home with an RBI single through the right side tying the score 1-1. Comstock reached first in an error and then went to second in a groundout in the third. Senior Elly McCarthy singled to left center, scoring Comstock for her 26th RBI. With sophomore Kaylee Werner up, a wild pitch allowed McCarthy to advance to second base. Werner unleashed a homerun to left field, her sixth of the season, putting the Jay’s in the lead 4-1. “Kaylee Werner had some great hits today and was very solid defensively. In my mind today was one of her best games this season.” Sheckard said. E-town would tack on two more runs by the end of the game, after Juniata managed to get one back in the top of the inning, finalizing the score 6-2 E-town, and giving the Jays their second 20-win season in a row.
E-town would go on to end their season in their Commonwealth Conference doubleheader against Lebanon Valley College at home on Senior Day. LVC hung on to win game one, 1-0, and rallied late in game two for a 6-2 victory. Sam Derr, of LVC came into game one with an 18-4 record on the season. She held the E-town offense to just three hits over seven innings. Tomasetti pitched just as well for the Jays, going all seven innings, giving up seven hits and registering one strikeout.
LVC scored the only run of the game in the top of the fifth. Derr batted an RBI single to left field, scoring Katie Deardorff from second. With two outs and Werner at third, E-town almost came away with a game tying run, but Derr promptly got the ball to first on the bunt to end the game.
E-town put themselves in a good position to win the second game, which they need to take the final spot in the Commonwealth Conference Championships. Freshman Keli Krause struck out four LVC players in the first four innings, and E-town scored a run in the bottom half of the fourth. The lead would double to 2-0 in the fifth as E-town made it back to back one-run innings. The Jays ended up in a bases-loaded situation, but an inning-ending kept them from scoring anymore runs.
LVC rallied in the final two innings getting two runs to tie in the sixth to tie the game. They managed to score four more runs in the seventh to take the lead as they held E-town scoreless in the second half of the seventh to secure the second win of the day. “LVC and Etown have a respectful rivalry where both teams always bring their A game no matter what the circumstance,” Said Comstock “We had the opportunities to win each game, however, it was not in the cards for us.” Comstock finished the day going 1-for-3 in each game, while Cooper went 1-for-4 in the second with a run batted in. McCarthy ended up nine-for –nine in stolen base attempts and Breneman was 1-for-2 in game one.
