Devils open SUNYAC season with sweep
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CONTACT: Jerry Reilly,
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Softball
FREDONIA, N.Y. -- Fredonia State opened the SUNYAC portion of its 2009 schedule with 4-1 and 3-2 wins Friday over Morrisville State.
In the opener, junior Rebecca Zimmerman (Jamestown) pitched a complete-game five-hitter and homered to help her own cause. With the score tied at 1-1 in the last of the third inning, Zimmerman hit the first pitch she saw leading off the inning over the center field fence. It was her first homer of the season.
Freshman Lauren Larson (Lakewood/Panama) missed her team's second homer in the inning by a matter of inches. Her drive to left-center hit the rail on top of the fence and bounded back into play. Freshman Michelle Lattner (Cheektowaga/West Seneca East) scored on the play before Larson was thrown out at third trying to stretch the hit into a triple.
The fourth Fredonia State run came in the sixth inning, the result of three hits. Freshman Courtney Wight (Bolivar/Bolivar-Richburg) had her second hit of the game and later scored on a pinch-hit double by junior Andrea Devon (Elmira/Notre Dame).
Zimmerman fanned five, walked only one, and induced 12 groundball outs.
In the nightcap, Lattner improved to 3-0 this season and freshman Jennifer Tighe (Hamburg/Frontier) worked two perfect innings for the save as the Blue Devils improved to 10-3-1 and 2-0 in the conference.
Lattner did not allow a hit until the fourth inning, and RBI double by Morrisville's Kim DeHimer (Rome) to tie the score at 1-1. The Blue Devils regained the lead in the last of the fourth on an RBI single by freshman Katie Turvey (Lockport/Depew), and tacked on an insurance run in the fifth on an RBI single by Devon.
Morrisville's Awilya Abdu-Shalid (Sidney) walked to lead off the sixth and scored from first on a single by right-center by Jennifer Allen (East Islip). Tighe then came on in relief of Lattner and retired six straight batters of the final two innings, three of them on strikes.
Offensively, Devon had two hits in game two while Wight went 3 for 3 - and 5 for 5 in the doubleheader - to raise her batting average to a team-high .483.
The Blue Devils stay in SUNYAC mode for their next scheduled doubleheader Tuesday at Brockport.