Youngstown State's run through the elimination bracket of the 2023 Horizon League Softball Championship came to a close Friday evening with a 2-0 loss to Oakland.
The Penguins, who fought off elimination three times, fell to the top-seeded Golden Grizzlies one game before the championship round. YSU finishes the campaign with a 27-27 record, while Oakland will move on to try and beat Northern Kentucky twice to win the double-elimination tournament.
Sara Fessler went 2-for-2 with a walk, and Elyssa Imler also had two hits for Youngstown State, which outhit Oakland 6-4 in the loss.
Penguins starter Sophie Howell, who threw every pitch for YSU in the tournament, allowed the two runs on one swing. It came in the third inning when Oakland recorded three of its four hits in the contest as Jen Krizka hit an RBI triple and scored on a throwing error. Otherwise, Howell retired the Golden Grizzlies in order in the second and fifth innings and worked around five walks.
Howell finished the tournament with a 3-2 record and allowed just five runs over 33 innings.
Offensively, YSU had its chances against Horizon League Pitcher of the Year Sydney Campbell but couldn't come up with a clutch hit. The Penguins had hits in the first, second, third, fifth and sixth innings, and they stranded six runners.
The biggest scoring opportunity came in the first as the Penguins had runners at the corners with nobody out in the first. Fessler led off with a double off the wall in left, and Hailey Niederkohr followed with a sharp single to right that moved Fessler to third. Campbell got Conchetta Rinaldi to foul out for the first out, and Fessler got caught in a rundown between third and home on Jillian Jakse's fielder's choice for the second out. Campbell then struck out Avrey Schumacher to end the threat.
Imler hit a two-out single and stole second but was stranded in scoring position in the second inning, and a double play erased a leadoff single by Fessler in the third.
In Oakland's half of the third, the Golden Grizzlies scored twice on three hits to score the only tallies of the contest. With a runner on second, Krizka delivered the big blow with a triple down the right-field line. She ended up scoring on the play as Fessler's relay throw to third base was wide.
The Penguins got two runners on in the fifth as Imler hit a one-out double and Fessler drew a two-out walk, but they were stranded. Jakse hit a one-out single in the sixth for YSU's final hit, and the Penguins were retired in order in the seventh.
