MANSFIELD, Conn. – Exactly a year to the day that the Eastern Connecticut State University softball team swept Wesleyan University at Clyde Washburne Field in what proved to be first and only games of the year, the No. 15 nationally-ranked Warriors opened their 2021 season with nearly identical results in a 7-0, 13-5 five inning sweep of Albertus Magnus College Thursday evening at Washburne Field.
 
Against Albertus (0-2), first-year Division I transfer Carley Stoker (Sandy Creek, NY) tossed a complete-game one-hitter with nine strikeouts in the opener and drove in four runs with a home run and two doubles on the day, and junior Brooke  Matyasovsky (Orange) homered twice (the 11^th and 12^th in her career) in the third inning of the nightcap and gained her first pitching win in that game.
 
In the first game, Stoker allowed only three batters over the minimum and gave up only an infield single in the second inning that spoiled a no-hitter in her Eastern debut. She walked three.
 
In the first inning of the first game, Matyasovsky drove in the first run of the season with a single and Stoker made it 3-0 with a two-run double to left in her first Eastern at-bat. She plated her third run of the first game with a double to highlight a four-run fifth when the Warriors batted around and were aided by an outfield error, two walks and a hit-by-pitch.
 
Batting cleanup, Matyasovsky added two more hits and four RBI in the second game to help herself to her first pitching win in her first career appearance. She allowed eight hits and two earned runs in 4 1/3 innings before Stoker closed it out. In an eight-run third, Matyasovsky drove in the first run with a leadoff homer, then stroked a two-run home run following junior Julia SanGiovanni's (East Haven) bases-clearing double to close out the scoring in the inning.
 
As the only freshman starter in the first game, second baseman Sarah Remillard (Grafton, MA) singled in each of her three at-bats, and was credited with her first career RBI in the fifth. Sophomore Carley Gessaro (Middletown) made her first career start in the second game at first base and reached safely all three times with her first career hit, a walk and hit-by-pitch and scored the first two runs of her career.
 
Second-year Division I junior transfer Carolyn Biel (Wallingford) also gained her first hit and run in an Eastern uniform when she reached on an infield single and scored in the eight-run third inning of the nightcap. First-year Keene State College transfer Cassie Woods (Mystic), a graduate student, reached base seven times in eight plate appearances with her first two career hits at Eastern, four hit-by-pitch and a walk and scored four runs.
 
Eastern hosts the University of Saint Joseph (CT) Sunday in a 1 p.m. non-conference doubleheader.