NACOGDOCHES, Texas – Junior center fielder
Taylor Brown made Abilene Christian softball history as her sixth base hit of Friday's second game at Stephen F. Austin served as the game-winner in a 7-6 Wildcat victory that took 10 innings to complete.
With two outs, Brown used her speed to beat out an infield single to the shortstop that also allowed
Baylee Travers to score the go-ahead run from third base. The Wildcats and senior reliever
Julia Montoya then survived another Ladyjack threat in the bottom of the 10th, getting cleanup batter Brittany Lewis to fly out to left and Annie Mehringer to foul out with runners at second and third base.
In earning her first victory of the spring, Montoya gutted through 3.2 scoreless innings of relief in which she allowed three hits, walked two, and stranded seven on base (four in scoring position). All of this after SFA rallied to tie the score at 6-6 with two runs in the seventh.
But back to Brown, who led the night cap off with a triple and scored two batters later on
Holly Neese's sacrifice squeeze. She singled again in the third, and in the fifth was on base for
Brianna Barnhill's three-run home run that gave ACU a 5-3 lead.
Brown would single once more in the sixth to break her personal single-game high of three hits, and to begin the eighth, she became the eighth member of ACU's five-hit club. The most recent member of this exclusive group was Tiana Tuinei, who posted her five-hit game on March 5, 2011 vs. Incarnate Word.
The Wildcats (16-18, 10-6 Southland) would tack on one more run in the fifth on a combination of two hits and two errors, but their 6-3 lead would soon disappear. SFA (19-21, 8-7 Southland) got one run back in the bottom of that frame on a RBI single by Lewis, and in the seventh, the Ladyjacks started a one-out rally with a Mehringer single followed by an infield error.
With runners in scoring position, reliever
Allison Turner uncorked a wild pitch that made it a 6-5 game and Faith Talley soon tied the score at 6-6 with her second of two base hits.
Montoya relieved Turner after the Talley single and walked the first batter she faced, but later got a fielder's choice at third base and a foul ball to left field.
Montoya went on to leave runners at the corners with two outs in the eighth and watched left fielder
Miranda Herron make all three outs in the ninth. Herron caught two fly balls on her own and threw Taylor LeFlore out at second base, as the corner infielder attempted to stretch a single into a double.
Junior
Casey-May Huff started game two for ACU and lasted 3.0 innings, giving up three runs on six hits.
Game one was a 5-1 loss for the Wildcats in which the Ladyjacks scored all their runs in the fifth inning after being blanked by starter
Hannah Null for the first 4.0 innings behind four strikeouts.
But while facing the bottom third of the SFA order in the fifth, Null walked two and allowed a bunt single leading the coaching staff to lift her for Montoya. Unfortunately, the Manchaca, Texas, native allowed a bases-loaded free pass that tied the score at 1-1 and Lewis crushed a two-out grand slam two batters later.
Montoya retired the side in order in the sixth, but neither she nor Null received much run support outside of
Brianna Barnhill's RBI double in the third inning as starter Makayla Sikes tossed a six-strikeout complete game.
ACU threatened Sikes in the early goings but Brown was thrown out at home from shortstop during a first inning in which the Wildcats left two in scoring position. Senior catcher
Cara Hoover also was left at third base in the second.
And after Barnhill's two-bagger in the third inning, Sikes retired 13 of the last 14 batters she faced as Travers reached on a third-base error in the seventh.
The Wildcats and Ladyjacks play the rubber game of their three-game series Saturday at 1 p.m.
