ST. PAUL, Minn. — It took 11 innings, and 23 days, but there was finally a Game 2 winner between the Saint Mary's University and Hamline fastpitch softball teams.
And to the victor belong the spoils — a berth in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Playoffs.
Unfortunately for the Cardinals, those spoils were not coming back home with them.
In what proved to be a winner-take-all battle for the final spot in the six-team conference tournament, the Pipers broke a 4-4 stalemate with a walk-off double in the bottom of the 11th inning, lifting HU to a 5-4 victory over Saint Mary's at Meredith Field.
Picking up where they left off on April 11 — deadlocked 3-3 heading to the 10th inning when darkness forced the game to be suspended — the Cardinals scored an unearned run in the top of the 10th.
Sarah Kraus (Onalaska, Wis.) laced a one-out grounder that HU second baseman Gabby Tuhey could not handle, allowing
Mackenzie Carey (Prescott, Wis.) — who was placed on second to open the inning — to score to break the 3-3 tie.
In the Piper half of the 10th, with Lydia Lecher starting at second, Tuhey grounded out to the right side, moving Lecher to third. Theresa Klinnert followed with an RBI double to center to knot the game at 4-4. Kraus got Costley to fly out to right for the second out, and, after intentionally walking Jenna Rubbelke, struck out Peterson to send the game to the 11th.
The Cardinals were able to push
Allison Ciero from second to third on a lead-off sacrifice bunt by
Riley Hall (Dallas Center, Iowa), in their half of the inning, but the freshman was stranded there, setting up HU's walk-off heroics.
With Amber Peterson on second, the Cardinals intentionally walked Megan Ruebbelke to put runners on first and second, and Kira Krueger followed by roping a double to right-center to plate Peterson with the game-winning run.
GAME 2: HOW THEY GOT HERE
Ciero and the Cardinals — coming off a 6-2 win in the first game of the conference doubleheader on April 11 — did not miss a beat to open the nightcap, scoring twice in their first at-bat. Ciero collected her fourth hit of the afternoon to open the game, stole second, and, after Hall reached on a fielder's choice, both scored on a
Heather Nordlund (Byron, Minn.) single for an early, 2-0 SMU lead.
Hamline threatened in the bottom of the first, loading the bases with one out, but Kraus— on in relief of starter
Molly Richgels (New Prague, Minn.) — induced a force-out and a strikeout to end the inning and preserve the Cardinals' two-run advantage.
The Pipers threatened again in the fourth – and this time, they cashed in, as Megan Rubbelke laced a two-run double and Grace Cook added an RBI single to give HU its first lead of the afternoon, 3-2.
After banging out four hits in the first inning — marking the third time in the doubleheader that SMU had posted four hits in an inning — Saint Mary's managed just one hit over the next four innings.
In the sixth, however, the Cardinals offense came back to life.
Ciero, who owned Saint Mary's only hit since the first inning — a third-inning single — led off the Cardinal sixth with hit No. 3 of the game. The freshman was sacrificed to second and moved to third on a wild pitch, before scoring the game-tying run on a Nordlund single to knot the game at 3-3.
Both teams had golden opportunities to end the game in the seventh — and again in the ninth — only to come up empty each time.
The Cardinals had the go-ahead run thrown out at the plate in the top of the seventh, while the Pipers put runners on first and second with one out, but Kraus induced a pair of groundouts to send the game into extra innings.
The Cardinals and Pipers each had a baserunner reach second base in the ninth with less than two outs, but neither team could scratch across the game-winning run.
Ciero collected her second straight three-hit game of the doubleheader, while Nordlund delivered her first collegiate three-hit contest — going 3-for-4 with three RBIs — as the tandem accounted for six of the Cardinals' nine hits.
GAME 1: CARDINALS WIN OPENER, 6-2
The Cardinals got on the board first in Game 1, parlaying four hits and a Piper error into four, third-inning runs — and a 4-0 Saint Mary's advantage.
Ciero got things started in the third with a one-out single, and moved to second on a passed ball. Hall delivered an RBI single to score Ciero, and promptly stole second.
Heather Nordlund walked and
Sophie Cave (Maplewood, Minn.) laced SMU's third single of the inning — this one down the left-field line —to plate Hall, and a Hamline error allowed pinch-runner
Savannah Swanson (Marengo, Ill.) to score the Cardinals' third run of the inning.
It was déjà vu for the Cardinals in the fifth, as Saint Mary's posted its second three-run inning — once again recording four hits and taking advantage of a Hamline error. With two outs and a runner on second, Saint Mary's turned back-to-back-to-back-to-back singles by
Cassie Sutor (Chicago, Ill.), Kraus, Marisa Kindler (Sussex, Wis.), and Ciero into three more runs and a commanding 6-0 cushion.
The Pipers cut into the Saint Mary's advantage in the bottom of the fifth, getting a two-run triple off the bat of Megan Rubbelke, but that would be the only runs HU would get off Kraus — who tossed a complete-game six-hitter.
Ciero finished with three hits in five at-bats to pace the Cardinals, who also got two hits from both Cave and Hall as part of their 12-hit attack.
