VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – The Manhattanville College softball team rallied for a split on its final day at the Virginia Wesleyan University Beach Blast on Saturday, defeating Gettysburg College by a 4-1 score after dropping an 11-2 contest to #13 Randolph-Macon College to start the day at the Princess Anne Athletic Complex.
Junior
Desiree Buboi (Villa Park, Calif./Orange Lutheran) led Manhattanville (6-4) with three hits, extending her season-opening hitting streak to 10 games. The Valiants also hit three more homers on the day, with graduate student
Dolores Diemicke (North Massapequa, N.Y./Plainedge), junior
Aarin Hartenstein (Massapequa, N.Y./Plainedge) and freshman
Brooke Franson (Newport Beach, Calif./Corona del Mar) all going deep.
Randolph-Macon 11, Manhattanville 2 (5 inn.)
Manhattanville gave up four runs in the bottom of the first and never recovered in the first game of the day, falling to the nationally-ranked Yellow Jackets by an 11-2 score.
Randolph-Macon scored four runs on three hits in the opening frame and added one more in the third to take a five-run lead before Manhattanville got on the board in the top of the fourth thanks to a solo homer off the bat of Diemicke. Franson also launched her first career homer in the fifth inning, but five RMC runs in the fourth and one more in the fifth ended the game early.
Senior
Alycia Feeney (Brewster, N.Y./Brewster) suffered the loss for the Valiants, allowing seven runs (six earned) on eight hits in three-plus innings.
Manhattanville 4, Gettysburg 1
Hartenstein struck out nine in seven innings to earn the victory in game two, leading Manhattanville to a 4-1 win over Gettysburg to close out the weekend.
For the second time this season, Hartenstein homered and earned the win in the circle in the same game. The junior struck out two batters in four of the first six innings, tying her for 15th on the school single-game strikeout list.
The Valiants opened the scoring with a pair of two-out runs in the second, thanks to back-to-back RBI doubles by junior
Sophia Chapelone (Carlsbad, Calif./La Costa Canyon) and senior
Alexis Ventarola (Eastchester, N.Y./Eastchester). Hartenstein followed with a solo homer in the third inning, and Buboi added an RBI single in the fifth inning.
Manhattanville will return to the Mid-Atlantic Region on Wednesday, when the Valiants take on Salisbury University in a non-conference doubleheader starting at 1:30 p.m.