Marley And the Sun Are Shining
LANCASTER, Pa. -- Swarthmore freshman pitcher Marley Specter won her second game of the season and junior Kathryn Riley doubled home two runs as the Garnet won the first end of a Centennial softball doubleheader at Franklin & Marshall Saturday afternoon.
Thrilled to be playing in sunny weather for the first time since mid-March, Swarthmore improved to 12-17 overall and 2-8 by winning the first game, 5-2. The hometown Diplomats (16-16, 4-8 CC) racked up nine hits to earn a 6-2 victory in the second affair.
F&M jumped out to a 2-0 lead on three hits in the second inning. The Garnet bats came alive with a two-out rally in the top of the fifth, started by a seeing-eye single off the bat of speedy catcher Kira Kern ’11 (Newtown Square, Pa. / Council Rock North). Sophomore Zoe Hendrickson (Strafford, N.H. / Coe-Brown Northwood Academy), junior Michele Perch (Kinnelon, N.J. / Kinnelon) and senior Lauren Walker (Fallston, Md. / The Hotchkiss School [CT]) all walked, brining Kern home with the first Garnet run. Riley (Dagsboro, Del. / Indian River) (above) followed with a double down the left field line, her sixth of the season, plating both Perch and Walker.
Specter (Woodmere, N.Y. / George W. Hewlett) (left) kept the Diplomats off-balance the rest of the way, spreading seven hits over 7.0 innings to improve to 2-1 on the year.
Swarthmore reversed roles with Franklin & Marshall in game two, assuming a 2-0 lead after two innings. Sophomore first baseman Krista Scheirer (Norristown, Pa. / Germantown Academy) had an RBI single in the first and the Garnet generated a second run off a Diplomats’ miscue in the following inning.
The fifth inning produced another run splurge, but this time it was Franklin & Marshall scoring six to grab a four-run lead on the way to the victory.
Riley (7-7) was given the loss, hurling 6.0 innings while allowing just two earned runs on nine hits.
More sunshine is in the forecast for Sunday and the Garnet are not passing up the opportunity to play softball. Swarthmore heads west on the Turnpike once again, traveling to Gettysburg for a 1:00 p.m. Centennial doubleheader.