PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Senior
Alyssa Vilchez (Brampton, ON) had five hits – giving her 99 in her four-year career – and pitched a complete-game five-hitter in the nightcap as the Eastern Connecticut State University softball team clinched a share of its tenth Little East Conference regular-season softball title with 5-3, 6-1 wins over Rhode Island College Tuesday afternoon at Dayna A. Bazar Field.
A winner of 14 straight – the eighth-longest winning streak in program history – Eastern (22-8, 12-0 LEC) moved to within one win of clinching the outright LEC title and gaining the No. 1 seed and hosting the conference tournament May 10-13. The Warriors have won eight straight against Rhode Island (14-16, 5-7 LEC). Eastern needs a total of four wins against Plymouth State University Friday at home and the University of Southern Maine on the road May 6 to post its second undefeated LEC regular season.
Rhode Island forced extra innings by scoring the tying run on a two-out RBI double by Alexis Boyce in the bottom of the seventh inning of the first game but Eastern pushed across two go-ahead unearned runs in the top of the eighth on senior
Julia SanGiovanni's (East Haven) opening hit-by-pitch, two errors, two sacrifice bunts and senior leftfielder
Taylor Darby's (South Windsor) tie-breaking opposite-field single to right.
Senior righty
Carley Stoker (Sandy Creek, NY) fanned eight, walked four and gave up nine hits en route to her 33
rd career pitching victory in 37 decisions in the first game after being staked to a 3-0 lead after three innings.
In the second game, Vilchez (9-2) struck out three and walked one and shut down the Anchorwomen on four hits after Rhode Island's Avery Katz led off the bottom of the first with a home run. Eastern tied the game in the second on sophomore
Alexa Boone's (Middletown) two-out single that plated Stoker, who had singled to open the inning, and scored five unanswered runs later off complete-game loser Gabby Cunha.
In Eastern's 12-hit attack in the nightcap, Vilchez was 4-for-4 with a triple, two runs scored and an RBI. Stoker and first-year shortstop
Emma Marellli (Waterford) each had two hits, junior second baseman and leadoff hitter
Sarah Remillard (Grafton, MA) extended her on-base streak to 14 with a sixth-inning single and SanGiovanni tied the program record when she was hit-by-pitch three times. With four hit-by-pitch on the day, SanGiovanni upped her program record in that department to 68 – the fourth-most in NCAA history.
On the day, Vilchez was 5-for-6 with three runs scored and an RBI, with Stoker and Darby each adding three hits and Stoker, Remillard and first-year junior transfer
Kaylee Armida (Pine Bush, NY) scoring twice as a pinch-runner, including the go-ahead run after SanGiovanni opened the eighth inning of the first game with her HBP.
In conference play this year, Vilchez (.432), Remillard (.406) and first-year player
Maddy Bowen (Hudson, NH) (.400) are all batting .400 or better to power a team .330 batting average, sophomore T
ori Heaphy (East Haven) leads the team with ten RBI and 26 total bases and Marelli is the team leader with 13 runs scored and six stolen bases. SanGiovanni is batting just .231 but has a team-leading .523 on-base percentage on the basis of nine walks and eight HPB and has four extra-base hits. Stoker is 7-0 with a save and 55 strikeouts in 49 1/3 inning and a 1.84 ERA; Vilchez is 4-0 with a 1.62 ERA and is holding opponents to a batting average below .200 (1.98).
With career pitching records of 33-4 (89.2 percent) and 14-2 (87.5), respectively, Stoker and Vilchez rank 3-4 all-time in winning percentage among those with at least ten decisions.
Eastern hosts Plymouth State Friday in a 3 p.m. doubleheader in a twinbill originally scheduled for Saturday.
