Greenville, S.C. — Youngstown State's softball team flipped the script from Friday and won both games of a doubleheader on Saturday to conclude its spring break trip and the Furman Round Robin.
After falling 9-1 and 11-1 on Friday, the Penguins bounced back in a big way on Saturday and beat the same two teams in different manners. Youngstown State won in a 10-7 slugfest against Gardner-Webb early in the morning, and Kelsey Ogin pitched a three-hit shutout in a 5-0 victory over Furman in the afternoon.
The Penguins went 4-8 in their 12 games spanning nine days in South Carolina, and they will host Cleveland State on Friday in their home and Horizon League openers.
The Penguins scored 10 of the final 12 runs to win 10-7 against Gardner-Webb, and Ogin's dominance in the circle allowed YSU to hang around and score five runs over the final two innings against Furman. Ayla Ray had three RBIs, and nine different Penguins had hits in the win over GWU, while against Furman, Taylor Truran had two hits and Reese Campbell-Schaller delivered the go-ahead RBI single.
Gardner-Webb scored five runs in the bottom of the first inning of game one, but the offense responded with four runs in the second to allow pitcher Autumn Behlke a chance to settle in.
The Penguins had four hits in the second, and three of the runs came after there were two outs. An error helped prolong the inning, and Grace Pilaczynski walked with the bases loaded to precede back-to-back RBI singles by Macy Littler and Lydia Wilkerson.
Gardner-Webb increased its lead to 6-4 with a two-out RBI single in the third before the Penguins erupted with six runs in the fifth to take their first lead at 10-6.Wilkerson tied the score with a two-out single that plated Bella Meyer, and Ayla Ray delivered the big hit with a bases-clearing, three-run double to left-center. Bree Kohler followed with a double that brought in Ray to complete the big inning.
Behlke allowed just one hit, an infield single, in the fourth through sixth innings, and she got a clutch fly out to end the seventh when the Runnin' Bulldogs brought the tying run to the plate.
While the runs came early and often against Gardner-Webb, Ogin and Furman's Lauralee Scott were locked up in a pitchers' duel in game two.
Scott worked out of jams with runners in scoring position in the first three innings, and Ogin forced the Paladins to leave two runners on in the third and strand the bases loaded in the fourth. Both teams left a runner on in the fifth before the Penguins broke the tie in the sixth.
Meyer, Truran and Ashlyn Bishop hit three straight one-out singles to load the bases, and Reese Campbell-Schaller came through with a pinch-hit single to shallow right to plate the first run of the game. Bishop and Truran both scored on a sacrifice fly error off the bat of Cassandra Carlson and an ensuing throwing error, and Campbell-Schaller raced home on a wild pitch to complete the scoring.
Ogin retired the Paladins in order in the bottom of the inning, and the pinch-runner Ellie Hardman scored on an error in the seventh to give the Penguins an extra cushion. Ogin didn't need it though, as she retired three straight batters in the bottom half after Furman's first two hitters reached.
