The Felician College softball team totaled 28 runs on 28 base hits on Saturday afternoon, but settled for a split of its Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference doubleheader with visiting Chestnut Hill College at Matera Field. Felician captured a five-inning, 17-0 win in Game 1, before Chestnut Hill rebounded for a 15-11 Game 2 victory.
Helping the squad to the split was Riverbank High School alum Amanda Lopez.
Felician junior first-baseman Ciera Clark (Granite Bay, Calif./Del Oro) went 4 for 4 plus three walks for the day. She scored seven runs and drove in five. Classmate Taylor Parker (Surrey, British Columbia/Semiahmoo) was 4 for 8 with seven RBI in the doubleheader. Senior second-baseman Halei Van Dyke (West Milford, N.J.) was 3 for 8, and her single in the seventh inning of Game 2 was the 100th hit of her career. She is the 13th member of Felician’s 100-hit club, which also includes two of her older sisters.
Senior right-hander Tori Bradburn (Ridge, Md./Great Mills) pitched a three-hit shutout and Felician (11-14, 3-7 CACC) had three home runs among its 15 hits in cruising to victory in the day's opening game. The Golden Falcons rallied for five two-out runs in the first inning on a three-run double by Kelsi Ludwigsen (Havre de Grace, Md./Harford Tech) followed by Van Dyke's two-run homer.
Clark tied a Felician record with her eighth round-tripper of the season in the second, a three-run blast to straightaway center field that put her team ahead, 8-0. Lauren DeGrushe had eight home runs in 2009. The Golden Falcons tallied five more times in the third, highlighted by Clark’s two-run double and a two run homer by Amanda Lopez (Riverbank, Calif./Riverbank). Lopez added a two-run single during the hosts’ four-run fourth.
Lopez was 4 for 4 with three runs scored and four RBI, while Clark finished 2 for 2, scored four runs and drove in five. Ludwigsen also knocked in four runs in the contest. Bradburn (4-4) struck out four batters and walked none. It was her first shutout of 2014 and the third of her career.
Chestnut Hill (3-15, 3-7) scored in its final six at-bats of the nightcap, plating nine runs in the sixth and seventh innings to hold off a furious Golden Falcon comeback.