College of Charleston
Samford
Cougars Claim Victory in Regular Season Finale
5/6/2011 9:04:00 PM | Softball
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The College of Charleston softball team completed its regular season campaign with a 4-2 bounce-back victory over Samford on Friday afternoon at Bulldog field.
After dropping Thursday's doubleheader, CofC (33-19, 12-11 SoCon) regrouped to preserve their .500-plus SoCon record and enhance their potential seeding leading into next week's Southern Conference Championships.
Stephanie Saylors (Easley, S.C.) went the distance in the pitching circle to earn the win for the Cougars and limited the Bulldogs to just two hits and one earned run while striking out three.
The Cougars outhit the Bulldogs by a 7-2 margin led by Kristi Woodall's (Huntersville, N.C.) 2-for-2 outing with two RBIs by way of a fourth-inning home run.
Robyn Harmon produced the first run of the game for Samford when she pelted a solo home run to centerfield in the bottom of the first inning.
After a pair of quiet innings, Woodall put CofC on top with a slicing home run which stayed just inside the rightfield foul pole with Katie Pesature (Brewster, N.Y.) on base.
The fifth and sixth were silent before the Cougars earned Saylors some breathing room in the seventh with three doubles in the seventh inning to move the score to 4-1. Hillary Stringer (Summerville, S.C.) led the way with a screamer down the leftfield line before Lizzy Vaughn (Placerville, Calif.) and Katie Forbes (Odessa, Fla.) each hit timely two-out doubles to the fence to cross a pair of insurance runs.
The added runs would prove necessary as Samford would plate one more in the bottom half of the seventh but Saylors would limit them to just that to preserve her complete-game, two-hit performance.
The Cougars will now await this weekend's results around the conference to determine their seeding in the Southern Conference Championships taking place May 11-15 in Statesboro, Ga., on the campus of Georgia Southern. The Cougars currently sit in fourth place in the league standings.
