Box Score 1 | Box Score 2
CASTLETON, Vt. – The VTSU Castleton softball team celebrated its first home games of the season by limiting 2026 Little East Conference pre-season favorite Eastern Connecticut State University to six hits and sweeping the Warriors for the first time, 3-0, 3-1 Saturday afternoon at Spartan Field.
 
Picked to finish seventh in this year's LEC pre-season poll after last year's 6-10 conference showing, Castleton (13-6, 5-1 LEC) takes over the conference lead, a game ahead of Eastern (13-9, 4-2 LEC) and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (16-6, 4-2 LEC).
 
The Spartans got complete-game three-hitters from junior Madison Gould (8-1) in the first game and senior Alex Brouillette (4-3) in the nightcap, the pair holding the Warriors to just one extra-base hit on Maddy Bowen's (Hudson, NH) one-out seventh-inning double in the first game.
 
In a matchup of two of the LEC's top four pitching leaders in earned run average, Gould outdueled Eastern sophomore Elizabeth Mitchell (Coventry) in the opener. Gould fanned eighth without a walk while the Spartans nicked Mitchell (9-3) for eight hits (five for extra bases). Mitchell struck out five and walked one.
 
Bowen had two of Eastern's hits in the opener (the 95^th and 96^th of her career), singling with two out in the first inning. Prior to Bowen's seventh-inning double, Gould gave up only one additional hit after Bowen's first-inning single -- a one-out single to junior Grace Jenkins (Groton), who was doubled off first on senior DP Carli LoPresto's (Stonington) infield popout that ended the inning.
 
In the first game, Castleton's runs came on Abby Hacker's two-out RBI single in the second, Makayla Walsh's home run on a full count leading off the fourth, and on a two-out error in the fifth.
 
All of the runs scored in the nightcap came in two innings – the Warriors taking a 1-0 lead in the top of the third and Castleton answering with its three runs in the bottom of the fifth as the Warriors dropped to 1-5 this year on their opponent's home field.
 
First-year pitcher Leah Chatfield (Naugatuck) and sophomore Julia Raymond (Woonstock, RI) gave the Warriors an ideal chance to win the nightcap by combining on a four-hitter, but Brouillette won the game herself with a three-run home run off the first pitch she saw from Raymond (just in the game) that was set up when Chatfield (3-3) hit a batter and walked a batter with one out.
 
The only run of the afternoon for Eastern was unearned and was set up on a pair of inning-opening errors in the third inning, with leadoff hitter Jordan Bennett (Plainville, MA) sending in pinch runner Ashlyn Kenefick (Southington) with a suicide squeeze bunt.
 
Brouillettte fanned six and walked two and did not an earned run while Eastern's pitching duo walked four and hit a batter.
 
Eastern looks to snap a three-game losing streak when it hosts Keene State College (11-9, 2-2 LEC) in an LEC twinbill Tuesday at 3:30 p.m.