With another pair of complete game wins against Yale and Brown, senior pitcher Alexis Sargent is putting Penn softball on her back in the tight Ivy League race.
Credit: Bonnie Mendelson , Bonnie Mendelson, Bonnie MendelsonPenn softball’s Alexis Sargent has already established herself as the premier pitcher in the Ivy League. And when the team needed her the most this weekend, she showed up.
In two starts, one each against Brown and Yale, the senior ace threw two complete games, compiling a 2.00 ERA for the weekend. Penn (14-12, 5-3 Ivy) went on to win both games, beating Yale by the score of 4-1 and Brown by the score of 5-3. Thanks to her solidarity on the mound, Sargent earned the victory in both.
The first game against Yale featured a vintage performance from Sargent. In seven innings she scattered six hits, struck out four and walked only one en route to her eighth complete game of the year. The lone run came on a home run in the fifth inning, and only once did Yale have more than one hit in an inning.
Sargent ran into a little more trouble against Brown on Saturday. In the first meeting between the Quakers and the Bears, the home team plated three runs in the sixth inning to whittle Penn’s lead down to two. Brown was threatening more with runners on first and third and only two outs, but Sargent shut the rally down.
All in all, she finished with a complete game, four more strikeouts and another win. The Alexandria, Va. native also contributed on the other side of the ball, helping to spark a three-run fifth inning with an RBI single.
Sargent has been a steady figure in the circle for Penn over the last two years, developing under the wing of star pitcher Alexis Borden, a 2015 graduate who topped the Ivy League in strikeouts her senior year with 144, and coming into her own during her junior season. While Sargent was no short of dominant in 2016, her strength has only grown this year. In 14 appearances, she leads the Ivy League in wins (9), strikeouts (74) and ERA (2.19).
With almost exclusively Ivy games left on the schedule, the Red and Blue will need Sargent to keep this level of play up if they want to have a chance at capturing an Ivy title. But this weekend, she provided the Quakers with the pitching performance that they needed, and that’s why she’s this weekend’s Penn Athletics Weekend MVP.
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