As darkness fell upon Johnny Williams Field, the Hillsdale College softball team put the finishing touches on a key doubleheader sweep that kept it well in contention for a postseason berth.
Some timely hitting from their most productive bats enabled the Chargers to pull off wins by scores of 7-2 and 9-5 over Ohio Dominican University on a windy Wednesday afternoon. Now winners in six of its last eight conference games, Hillsdale is now 17-15 overall and 8-6 in the GLIAC. The team plays at Ashland Thursday before hosting Walsh and Malone this weekend.
In game 1, Hillsdale scored four times in the second inning and once in the fifth to erase an early 1-0 deficit. The big blast came from the bat of junior Sarah Grunert, who doubled off the center field wall, scoring Kelsey Gockman and Ainsley Ellison to put the Chargers in command. Senior Jessica Day used her speed to score off Ellison's infield single earlier in the inning, and Gockman drove in a run with a single in the frame as well.
Sophomore Bekah Kastning looped a single to center, bringing home Gockman and Grunert in the sixth inning. Five different players – Grunert, Sarah Klopfer, Kate Ardrey, Ellison and Gockman – each had two hits in the opener for Hillsdale.
On the mound, freshman Danielle Stiene recorded her ninth win of the season with nine strikeouts. She now has 142 strikeouts on the season, third-most in program history.
Both Grunert and Kastning kept up their big hitting in game 2. Kastning launched a rocket off the center field wall with two outs and the bases loaded in the fourth inning to push Hillsdale's lead to 6-2. She finished the game 2-for-4 with 3 RBI.
Grunert was 2-for-3 with 3 RBI of her own, two of those runs coming on a single to center that scored Ellison and sophomore Cassie Asselta.
Asselta was 2-for-3 with 2 RBI and 2 runs scored, while Ardrey also scored twice for the Chargers. In the last two days, Hillsdale has gone 4-0 against Findlay and Ohio Dominican. In 2014, the Chargers were 0-4 against those two teams.
Photo by Chelsea Farrell