MANSFIELD, Conn. – The No. 3 nationally-ranked Eastern Connecticut State University softball team scored three runs in the first inning and sophomore Alexis Michon (Montville) pitched a three-hitter over the first six innings as the Warriors won the best-of-three NCAA Division III Mansfield, CT Super Regional in two games with a 4-0 victory over Randolph-Macon College Saturday morning at Clyde Washburne Field.
 
With its 27^th win in its last 28 games, Eastern (43-5) advances to the eight-team NCAA Division III double-elimination national tournament which begins Thursday at Salem, VA. Friday, the Warriors had moved to within a win of capturing their second Super Regional title in the last three non-Covid seasons behind Michon's complete-game four-hitter and graduate student Cassie Woods' (Mystic) two-out RBI single in the bottom of the eighth inning in a 1-0 victory.
 
Saturday, Eastern scored three times in the top of the first inning against No. 16 nationally-ranked Randolph-Macon (35-11) junior lefty Riley Baughan (12-5), who allowed four straight hits after there was one out before being relieved by 5-foot-11 inch freshman ace righty Gracie Ellis. Ellis, who had fanned ten and had given up only six hits in Friday's loss, limited the Warriors to four hits and one run the rest of the way but the runs off Baughan proved to be decisive.
 
Graduate rightfielder Alexis Tyrrell's (Torrington) one-out bunt single in the first set up senior All-America first baseman Brooke Matyasovsky's (Orange) program-record 41^st career home run – which tied the season record of 16 – to give the Warriors a lead they would not give up. Senior cleanup hitter Julia SanGiovanni (East Haven) then doubled and moved to third on a wild pitch, and after a conference at the mound, Michon made it 3-0 with a hard single to center. Senior leftfielder Carley Stoker's (Sandy Creek, NY) suicide squeeze in the sixth plated pinch runner Maggie Baker (Hudson, MA) with an insurance run.
 
Junior second baseman Alyssa Vilchez (Brampton, ON) was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player and Michon the tournament's Most Outstanding Pitcher. Vilchez, who scored on Woods' game-ending single Friday, had two hits in each game and handled seven chances in the field without an error. She also pitched a 1-2-3 seventh inning, getting three ground balls on nine pitches.
 

Michon (23-1), who won her 20^th consecutive game Saturday, struck out 14 in 14 tournament innings, allowing seven hits (six singles) while walking two and hitting a batter. The combined shutout with Vilchez was a program-record 22^nd for the team this season. The MVP of last weekend's regional tournament, Michon threw 157 of her 211 pitches for strikes, with Saturday's win moving her into fourth place for wins in a season.
 
Woods added a seventh-inning single to tie the program season record of 71 hits. Behind Vilchez' four tournament hits, Woods had three, Michon, SanGiovanni, and Matyasovsky adding two each. Ranked among the national Top Ten in a number of offensive categories, among them hits, slugging and runs, Eastern was limited to 14 hits, 12 of them singles, but the nation's third-ranked defense played without an error for the eighth straight game and for the 30^th time this year.
 
The Yellow Jackets managed only seven hits (six singles) in the tournament, with freshman leadoff hitter Amanda Lanyon the only player with as many as two. She also reached once on a hit-by-pitch. Ellis, the MVP of the Ashland, VA Regional, gave up ten hits and two (earned) runs in 14 1/3 innings, striking out 15 without a walk and hitting a batter.
 
The national tournament appearance for the five-time national champions will be the fourth in the last 13 years under 21^st-year head coach Diana Pepin. The Warriors finished third at Eau Claire, WI in 2010 and third in 2019 at Tyler, TX and fifth in 2011 at Salem, VA. The team won six games in those three national tournament appearances. One win in the tournament will tie the program's season record of 44, set in 2012.