WMVO Good Times Great Oldies
RALEIGH, N.C. — After belting 42 hits in its season-opening doubleheader Sunday, the Kenyon College softball team managed 13 hits Monday and lost both ends of a doubleheader at William Peace University. The host Pacers took game one, 6-4, and then completed the sweep with an 8-4 game-two win.
Over the course of the two games, Kenyon junior Maeve McLaughlin was Kenyon’s best at the plate. She rang up a .714 batting average (5-for-7) with a double and a pair of runs scored. The rest of the Owls team, however, combined for a .160 batting average (8-for-50).
In the first game, William Peace scored twice in the first inning, but was countered by three runs from Kenyon in the top of the second inning. The Owls benefited from a couple Pacers’ errors, a hit-by-pitch, and two singles to take the lead.
William Peace answered right back, stringing together doubles in the bottom of the second inning to knot the game at 3-3. Two innings later, the Pacers doubled their total when Adanya Day smoked a three-run homer that gave William Peace a 6-3 lead.
Kenyon got one of those runs back in the seventh, when Arianna Jalomo ripped a solo shot. It was her first homer of the season and the second of her collegiate career. Jalomo was one of just three Kenyon players with a multiple hit day. She finished the doubleheader 2-for-7, as did Brooke Avila.
Game two came down to one big inning for William Peace. The Pacers scored two in the second inning and held that lead until the fifth inning. In the top of the fifth, Kenyon got Avila and Emma Cashell on board. They both ended up swiping bags and later scored on a ball that Keala Montgomery put in play, but the Pacers couldn’t handle.
In the top of the sixth, Natalya Delsante gave Kenyon a one-run edge with an RBI double that scored McLaughlin. That, however, was met in the bottom of the inning by a six-run, William Peace explosion that put the game away. Day was right in the middle of it again, smashing a grand slam and logging seven RBI across the two games.
Kylie Hamm and Izzy Akin did most of the pitching for the Owls. Overall, the Kenyon staff yielded 14 runs, 13 of which were earned, on 16 hits and 10 walks.
The Owls, now 2-2, will keep heading south and begin a week-long stretch of games in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. First up are Wednesday games against Lancaster Bible College and Brooklyn College.
