The Falcon softball team will get the opportunity to defend their Mid-American Conference Tournament championship as they clinched a spot in the eight-team tournament with a 2-1 come from behind win over the Buffalo Bulls yesterday.
Liz Vrabel pitched a complete-game for BG allowing only one run on six hits and striking out 10 as the Falcons completed a three-game sweep of the weekend series. A series that saw BG out-score the Bulls 11-1 in the three games as the Falcons move to 26-26 on the year with a MAC record of 11-8 after 1-0, 8-0 wins on Saturday.
“We told the girls if we took care of business this weekend then we can breathe a little easier all week,” head coach Leigh Ross-Shaw said of the wins and of going into the team’s last weekend at MAC-best Central Michigan. “We could go in next weekend and play loose and not have to worry about a must-win game.”
Taking care of business was what Vrabel did for the Falcons all weekend as she also pitched a complete-game in the opening game Saturday allowing only four hits and striking out 13 in eight innings. The Falcons won in the extra-frame in the bottom part of the inning when Allison Vallas’s hit scored Kari Steigerwald on the first of Vallas’s game- winning hits on the day.
Vallas would later double in the fifth inning of game 2 scoring two runners to end the game under the MAC’s eight run mercy rule after five innings. She ended the weekend 4-9 with three RBIs.
Her hit with one on and one out in the fourth inning Sunday got the Falcons come from behind victory moving. Following a lead-off hit by D.J. DeLong and a pop-up by Lindsay Heimrich, Vallas’s base hit to right put two on base for the Falcons’ leading-hitter Gina Rango who would drive in the tying run with a double off the fence in right.
Jeanine Baca would then hit a sac-fly to right that would score Vallas from third and would eventually be the game-winning RBI. BG only managed three hits on the game as all came in the bottom part of the fourth.
“Usually when they (opposition) get that one run early on we have not been coming back, we’ve been shut out,” Ross-Shaw said. “For us to score those runs in the fourth showed a lot of character from this team and showed that they aren’t going to give up anymore.”
The runs didn’t come easy though as Buffalo pitcher Sophie Barstad kept BG at bay for most of the game as she pitched a complete-game and retired nine straight to lead things off. She finished the day allowing only two runs on three hits and had two strikeouts.
Her team couldn’t help her out though as after grabbing an early 1-0 lead on two hits they could only manage four hits in the final six innings. It was a hit by Julie Hibner that scored Mary Russell from third that would account for Buffalo’s lone run on the weekend.
“Buffalo was a team that came in with the attitude that we aren’t going to get swept,” Ross-Shaw said. “They were very aggressive right from the beginning and I think that might have caught us off guard, but it was a case where we did the right things and it worked out for us.”
Working out for the Falcons is what it did as despite some sloppy fielding on the day they were able to do enough to earn the victory. Their pitching made up for those mistakes in the field and ultimately made the difference on the weekend as Emily Gouge also picked up a win in Saturday’s game 2 win pitching a one-hitter while striking out six in the five innings.
Gouge is now 6-6 on the year while Vrabel is 15-11 after picking up two wins.
With her game-tying hit, Rango became the first Falcon to drive in 100 runs in a career. She was 1-2 on the day with 1 RBI after going 0-6 in the first two games.
The Falcons will now head to Central Michigan on Saturday and Sunday before participating in the MAC Tournament May 11-14.
