Game 1 box score: Wayne St. 3, HC 1
Game 2 box score: SVSU 8, HC 3
There is always sadness when an athletic season comes to an end. But for the 2015 Hillsdale College softball team, there were other feelings Saturday afternoon, like satisfaction of a point proven, both internally and externally, and natural excitement for what the future holds.
After winning back-to-back GLIAC Tournament games for the first time in program history Friday, the Chargers advanced to winners' bracket play Saturday at the conference tournament, held at the Marathon Diamonds in Findlay, Ohio. Hillsdale lost both of its games, 3-1 to top-seeded Wayne State, and 8-3 to Saginaw Valley State. The Chargers' season comes to a close with a 25-23 overall record, the third winning season it's had in the past four years.
Wayne State and Saginaw Valley will square off for the conference tournament championship Sunday.
After posting wins of 4-0 and 9-0 Friday to advance to Saturday's action, the Chargers had trouble generating offense in both games Saturday. Senior Melissa Felkey delivered the team's first hit against the Warriors in the top of the seventh inning. Felkey eventually scored on a fielding error by Wayne State to prevent the shutout.
Freshman pitcher Danielle Stiene made the final start of her season against Wayne State, and went toe-to-toe with Wayne State's Lindsay Butler, the GLIAC Pitcher of the Year. Stiene didn't allow a run through 5 1/3 innings against Wayne State, giving her a scoreless streak of 18 1/3 innings in this year's GLIAC Tournament. The Warriors got on the board with a one-out solo home run by Emily Bryce in the seventh, breaking up a scoreless tie.
Stiene pitched 5 2/3 innings with four strikeouts and one walk allowed. She set a new Hillsdale single-season record for strikeouts by a pitcher with 216, crushing the old record by 17.
The Chargers got off to a great start against SVSU, thanks to a two-run, first-inning home run by sophomore Bekah Kastning. The team's leading hitter this season, Kastning had been robbed of home runs by the wind on numerous occasions through the season. But even the wind couldn't keep her crush shot from clearing the left-center field fence, giving Hillsdale a 2-0 lead.
SVSU came back to jump ahead 3-2 in the bottom of the second inning, and used the home run ball to break a 3-3 tie in the bottom of the fourth.
Kastning finished the season with 66 total hits, the fourth-most in school history and the most by any Charger player since 1995. She finished with a .423 batting average, seventh-highest in school history.
But the feeling of satisfaction the team felt can be traced back to the winter month of February, when the preseason coach's poll was released. At that time, Hillsdale was picked to finish in 10th place, well out of the conference tournament field. The Chargers' two Friday tournament wins enabled them to officially finish third in the conference postseason tournament, the ranking that matters far more than what is revealed in the preseason.
Photo by Brad Monastiere