WALESKA, Ga.— The Montreat softball team lost a pair of 5-inning Appalachian Athletic Conference (AAC) contests Saturday afternoon in Georgia at the hands of the (RV) Reinhardt University Eagles. With a 12-1 defeat in the initial contest and a 9-0 loss in game two, the Cavaliers fell to 5-16 (1-9 AAC) on the season.
Alyssa Hudson notched a 1-out single in the top of the first inning in game one, and after a productive out,
Leyna Gould drove her home on a line-drive single to right; however, despite two early hits and a 1-0 lead, the Cavalier offense remained quiet the rest of the game. Eagles pitching retired the final 13 Montreat hitters to close out the opener.
Reinhardt (11-5, 6-0 AAC) responded swiftly in the following half-inning thanks to a 2-base throwing error and an RBI single. Errors aided the Eagles in the bottom of the third also as a pair of miscues coupled with eight RU hits helped the hosts surge ahead of the visitors by eight runs (9-1).
The Eagles tacked on three insurance runs in the fourth to make their lead 12-1, and the Cavs came up empty in their final at-bat of the 5-inning affair.
Hudson and Gould recorded Montreat's only hits in game one as the visitors were outhit by RU, 15-2.
Montreat had three times as many hits in game two (6) as it did in game one (2), but scoring a run proved harder to come by in the latter contest.
Cameryn Bass,
Samantha Browning,
Bella Colbert and
Keelie Mauk each registered a hit across the first three innings, but the Cavalier offense couldn't find the timely base knock to bring a runner home.
On the other side, Reinhardt scored in the bottom half of each inning it batted. The Eagles pushed one run across in both the first and second, and a pair of crooked numbers in the third and fourth vaulted the hosts out to a 9-0 lead through four frames.
Needing two runs to continue the ballgame, Colbert and
Jasmine Rachal did their part with a pair of singles to place Cavs on base; however, Montreat ended the game just 1-for-11 with runners on base as the visitors failed to come up with the clutch hit. In the end, the Eagles snagged a 9-0 shutout win in five innings.
Colbert (2-2) had a perfect day at the plate in game two, and
Kyann Lyne threw 0.2 scoreless innings in relief thanks to a pair of strikeouts.
The Montreat softball team heads south to the state of Florida for its next two doubleheaders on Monday and Tuesday. On Monday, the Cavaliers play Aquinas (Mich.) and Indiana Tech at 2:00 and 4:30 p.m. at the USSSA Space Coast Complex in Melbourne, Fla.
