BOONE, N.C. - The College of Charleston softball team fell, 6-2, to Georgia Southern in the second half of a two-game Southern Conference Championship at Sywassink/Lloyd Family Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
The Cougars strung together four must-have wins including one over Georgia Southern earlier in the afternoon to extend their tournament run all the way into the if-necessary championship game of the double-elimination tournament.
Following the conclusion of the championship, Amanda Lonergan (Pembroke Pines, Fla.), Ashton Jarrett (Hanahan, S.C.) and Hope Klicker (Walla Walla, Wash.) were placed all the all-tournament team and were all key pieces to the Cougars' championship run.
Klicker won five games in the pitching circle during the 2012 tournament which ties a tournament record. She shares it with Chattanoogas's Brooke Loudermilk who won five games back in the 2008 tournament.
Lonergan hit her second homerun of the tournament in the fourth inning but it wouldn't be enough to spark yet another dramatic Cougar comeback.
CofC matched the Eagles with eight hits in the game led by Corthell and Lizzy Vaughn (Placerville, Calif.) with two apiece. Corthell scored the Cougars' only other run of the game in the first inning.
The Cougars, who had already had to pitch 14 innings on Saturday, sent three different pitchers into the circle in their third game. Stephanie Saylors (Easley, S.C.), Klicker and Jen Rosene (Charlotte, N.C.) combined in the effort and allowed eight hits and struck out three.
Just as they did in the first edition of the championship game, the Cougars jumped on the Eagles early and plated a run in their first trips to the plate. After Saylors pitched out of a jam in the top of the first, Corthell led off the bottom half of the inning with a double into the leftfield corner and scored on a two-out RBI single sent up the middle by Kelsey Hodgson (Woodstock, Ga.).
The Eagles erased the Cougars' lead right away when Andrea Tarashuk put the teams back on level terms with a second-inning leadoff homerun to right field. Two batters later, the Eagles took control when Tabby Douberley sent one out to center field to give GSU their first lead of the day.
GSU padded that lead with two more long balls in the fourth inning of the game. After a one-out walk, Lexi Allen and Alexa Lewis hit back-to-back home runs for a three-run surge.
Lonergan put a charge into a ball to start the fourth inning and sent it onto the roof of the football practice facility beyond the outfield fence and cut the lead to 5-2. Her homer was the 41st of the tournament which shattered the previous tournament record of 20. CofC led that effort with a total of 10 homeruns in the 2012 tournament.
For just the second time in the teams' two-game championship duel, a team manufactured a run without hitting the ball over the fence in Georgia Southern's fifth inning. Mackenzie Williams drew a leadoff walk and went all the way to third on a Tarashuk single. Williams later scored on an RBI groundout by Kourtny Thomas to put GSU up 6-2, the eventual final.
This marked the second straight season that the Cougars won four straight elimination games to reach the championship game and earn the SoCon runner-up trophy.
On Saturday alone, the Cougars won two games over tournament No. 1 Georgia Southern and No. 2 Chattanooga just to put them in a place to claim the tournament crown and the SoCon's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
