By Ed Marrone
It was fitting that on their day, three of the Pride’s softball seniors catapulted the team to victory.
On Senior Day first baseman Hailey Clark hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the eighth inning, and pitchers Callie Osborne and Adrienne Clark combined on a solid pitching effort as the Pride completed a three-game sweep with a 4-2 victory over James Madison University (JMU) on Sunday.
The sweep gave the Pride a half-game lead over Towson University atop the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) standings as the team improved to 11-2 in conference play.
Towson swept a two-game set at Delaware (10-2). Each team will play its final regular season series this weekend, with the Pride traveling to Drexel University and the Tigers host last place University of North Carolina Wilmington. Home field advantage for the CAA Tournament is on the line, so the upcoming weekend is crucial to both teams.
The Pride dominated JMU, giving up just three runs in three games against the Dukes. After a ten-day layoff from her last start, Osborne showed no signs of rustiness as she won the first two games of the series. She pitched 12 1/3 innings while giving up just one run and six hits and then got through the first four of the finale before running into some trouble.
“This game was awesome,” said Osborne, who extended her school record of consecutive wins to 17 this weekend. “We couldn’t have asked for anything better on Senior Day. Hailey is a great player. We knew that any of our players could step up and get that hit, and we’re glad that it turned out to be Hailey.”
The Pride (33-14-1 overall, 11-2 CAA) jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the third inning on junior second baseman Lisa Wambold’s 11th home run of the season. Osborne was strong through the first three plus innings before allowing an RBI single to JMU catcher Ashlee Schenk, which narrowed the Pride’s lead to 2-1. The Dukes (25-24, 6-9) tied the game in the next inning on another RBI single off of Osborne, this time by first baseman Megan Smith. This prompted Pride head coach Bill Edwards to make a pitching change as he handed the ball to Adrienne Clark. Adrienne buckled down and retired 10 of the 11 hitters she faced and picked up the win, improving to 9-8 on the season.
“Callie had great stuff and good command of all of her pitches,” Edwards said. “She was outstanding and very economical with her pitches. She ran into some trouble in the last game so we gave the ball to Adie. When she came in we knew the game was in good hands. Adie was really sharp today.”
Clark’s exceptional pitching performance out of the bullpen set the stage for the other Clark to step up to make the biggest hit of the weekend-and arguably the entire season. Junior third baseman Tara Ulrich led off the bottom of the eighth with a double to centerfield before Hailey Clark launched her majestic shot over the fence in left-center field. The blast was Clark’s sixth of the season and 24th of her career, which tied the school record first accomplished by former All-American Amanda Hallaway over the course of the 2000-03 seasons.
“I was just looking for something to drive,” said Clark, who said she was not looking to hit a home run in the at bat. “All I wanted to do was drive the ball to the ride side so I could move Tara over to third. I never swing to hit home runs, but it’s a good day when something like this happens.”
Despite not trying to hit a home run, Clark admitted she enjoyed the moment.
“It was pretty amazing,” she said, smiling. “I couldn’t have scripted it any better. I have a lot of family and friends who came to the game, so it was amazing to win it that way.”
As Edwards said last week, the Pride controls its own destiny, and that will continue to ring true going into the last week of the regular season. The team will travel to play a non-conference doubleheader at Stony Brook University on Wednesday before venturing to Philadelphia to take on third-place Drexel University (8-6).
It will be a difficult test for the Pride, which is not accustomed to having another team nipping so closely at its heels in the standings. However, despite the neck-in-neck battle with Towson, the Pride is confident and ready for the challenge. “Our defense and pitching needs to stay consistent, which it always has been,” Clark said.