Softball drops pair of heartbreakers in N.Y. on Saturday

The Penn softball team will have to wait until at least Wednesday to take a victory lap.

Penn (6-11-1) added to their loss tally for the season by two this weekend when they dropped a doubleheader to Fordham, 4-3, and 5-4.

The Rams, who are currently 17-9, swept the Quakers to continue their four-game winning streak.

"I was pleased with our performance overall," Penn junior Erin O'Brien said. "Next time we just have to get more runs. Personally, I expected to win. We have a lot of talent and we played really well. They just happened to score one more run.

"It just came down to the last inning. We just didn't come away with the win."

Senior Danielle Landolt agreed with O'Brien and emphasized that it was merely the Red and Blue's poor scoring luck that allowed the Rams to eke by Penn.

"We would have liked to have won," Landolt said. "But we played two really good games and only lost in the last innings. It was very close. We did everything pretty well. We hit well, played good defense and our pitching was excellent.

"Now we've just got to put it all together and hold [our opponents] to less runs. Sometimes all you need is a piece of luck for things to go your way."

However the Rams were not pushovers reliant on bad breaks. The impressive Fordham team Boasts three former Division III All-Americans, an inarguably solid offense, and -- against Penn --home field advantage.

With these factors in place the Rams were able to claim two hard-fought victories from the Quakers.

In the first game the Quakers did a good job of holding the Rams off, and went into the sixth inning with a convincing 3-0 lead. Strong offensive play on the parts of senior Crista Farrell, O'Brien, sophomore Zahya Hantz, and freshmen Meghan Cowen and Jen Nichols allowed the Quakers to score three runs in the fourth inning.

However, Fordham answered back with three runs of their own in the sixth inning to tie the game, and ultimately won it in the seventh when Fordham freshman phenom Michelle Schlichtig singled with the bases loaded to drive in the winning run.

Off the momentum from their first win the Rams begun the second game by scoring three runs in the first inning, followed by another in the fourth.

Not to be outdone, the Quakers scored four clutch runs in the seventh inning to tie the game. However, the Rams were able to manufacture the one more run they needed.

With a single, stolen base and another single, Fordham got the lead and the 5-4 win.

"We had a good two games," Landolt said. "Unfortunately the final score doesn't always reflect that."

In their upcoming games the Quakers will work towards scoring the runs that they so badly needed this weekend.

"We're going to start practicing scoring runners and hitting to move the runner over so that we can start scoring more runs," O'Brien said.

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