After two and a half innings of scoreless play, a deafening crack of Hannah Slike’s bat broke the scoring drought. Slike smashed the second pitch of her at-bat past the left-field wall and watched it crash into the scoreboard as she ran around the bases.
Her teammates jumped out of the dugout and swarmed the plate, waiting for Slike’s return to home. Slike’s triumphant stomping of home plate put the Eagles up 1–0 and seemed to be a sign that the Eagles would defeat Syracuse, who they had beaten in their first two games of the series and the past five times they had met.
Taylor Posner’s seventh inning home run confirmed the opposite. Posner’s running to home plate surrounded by her teammates mimicked Slikes, but in this case it put Syracuse (14–13, 2–7 Atlantic Coast) up nine runs over BC (20–9, 3–3) and all but clinched a 10–1 victory for the Orange.
“We had a bad day, but a day that also kind of put us in check and teaches us how to hold ourselves to better standards both defensively, in the circle, offensively” BC head coach Amy Kvilhaug said.
A series of BC fielding errors and hits from Syracuse allowed the Orange to take control of the game and put the Eagles in a hole they would not recover from. The Eagles recorded a season-high five errors, up three from their previous high of two errors.
One of the five errors came at a crucial time for the Eagles, as a misplaced glove throw by shortstop Gator Robinson to second baseman Emma Jackson allowed Syracuse’s Angie Ramos to score in the fourth inning. This sequence put the Orange up 2–1 and put the Eagles in a deficit from which they never recovered.
“We need to continue to hold ourselves to the standards in practice,” Kvilhaug said.
In spite of the lopsided score, the Eagles only recorded three less hits than the Orange. The Eagles twice left the bases loaded in different innings and finished those innings scoreless.
“We had bases loaded in the first inning with one out and we did nothing,” Kvilhaug said. “We have got to have players come up and be productive in situations where runners are in scoring positions and that has kind of been our achilles heel this year.”
Kvilhaug also emphasized the importance of such losses for her team’s long-term development.
“We can fix some of this stuff in practice by just changing our mentality and the way we approach it,” Kvilhaug said. “We also talked about needing kids to step up as leaders when you know things are going to hell in a handbasket.”
Makenna Segal led the Eagles with three hits, and both Robinson and Slike contributed two of their own. Abby Dunning recorded seven strikeouts, while Halie Pappion recorded three strikeouts of her own.
Despite the outcome of its final game of the weekend, BC won the series with two wins on Friday afternoon against Syracuse. Both were low-scoring games, with neither game exceeding five total runs.
In the Eagles first game on Friday, they edged out a 2–1 victory over the Orange. Robinson’s second-inning home run put the Eagles up 2–0 and sent both her and Darien McDonough home. Despite an RBI from Syracuse’s Vanessa Flores in the seventh inning, the Eagles managed to hold on and close the game out.
Dunning pitched all of the first game, recording 11 strikeouts while only allowing three hits.
In the Eagles’ second game, they pulled out another one-run victory, this time beating the Orange 3–2.
An RBI from Nicole Giery put BC up by one run in the first and McDonough’s sacrifice RBI added another run to BC’s total in the fourth inning. A two-run home run from Posner in the sixth inning tied the game, but Slike delivered the game-winning RBI in the last inning to give the Eagles the victory.
Slike led the team with three hits while Robinson added two of her own. Jackson and Giery also added a hit.
Pappion recorded five strikeouts in 26 batters faced and pitched the entire game.
