With a runner on first and no outs in the inning, San Diego State sophomore Leia Ruiz sent the 1-2 pitch by Ashley Sissel ’17 deep to center field. Megan Averitt ’15 chased back, but the ball sailed just out of the reach of her glove as the junior crashed into the wall. The ball caromed off the fence towards right fielder Brianna Lohmann ’16. Lohmann tried to replicate her fifth-inning heroics as she came up firing to try to catch sophomore Monica Downey out at the plate, but Downey slid in just under the tag by catcher Alex St. Romain ’14 for the run that ended the Big Green’s season.
The senior and the rest of the Big Green women walked to their dugout, where they discarded their equipment and lined up to congratulate the San Diego State University Aztecs on the win.
In its inaugural appearance in the NCAA softball tournament, Dartmouth fell 8-0 to No. 4 Arizona State University Friday and 8-0 to San Diego State University Saturday, bringing its season to an end. While the Big Green hung with Arizona State and San Diego State in the early going of both games, a few big innings propelled the Sun Devils and Aztecs to victory.
“I’m so proud of our team,” head coach Rachel Hanson said at a postgame press conference after the Arizona State game. “My girls battled their guts out today. Really proud of how they competed.”
Fresh off claiming its first Ivy League title, Dartmouth (31-19, 18-2 Ivy) hoped to make a little noise in the Tempe regional, but its batting order was silenced in two straight games by two of the nation’s best pitchers, Sun Devils’ senior Dallas Escobedo and San Diego State sophomore Danielle O’Toole.
“It was surreal,” outfielder Lohmann said after the San Diego State game. “It was one thing you hope for as a kid. Once you get to college you realize it is going to be a lot harder then you thought. Last year we worked hard, and this year we worked harder. We really wanted this and the whole team came together. We all earned this. We all worked so hard and it was a great experience to be able to share with my teammates and my coaches. I wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else.”
Escobedo, who ranks third in the NCAA with 310 strikeouts, held Dartmouth to just one hit, a third-inning single by Averitt. For comparison, Kristen Rumley ’15, who squared off against Escobedo in the circle, led the Ivy League in strikeouts with 197. Escobedo struck out eight batters in the five-inning game against Dartmouth.
“She was a little faster than what we have seen lately,” Hanson said at the press conference. “She keeps you off balance. She is a great pitcher.”
Escobedo gave up two walks to outfielder Karen Chaw ’17, but effectively shut down the rest of the Dartmouth lineup all game. Only two Big Green players put the ball out of the infield all game — Averitt’s single and a flyout by third basemam Kelsey Miller ’16. No Dartmouth runner advanced into scoring position.
With her second-inning walk, Chaw earned the distinction of being the first Dartmouth softball player to reach base in an NCAA tournament.
The Sun Devils’ first batter of the game reached on a bunt single, and the team’s offense showed it came ready to play. Despite allowing two runners to enter scoring position, Rumley worked out of trouble and escaped the inning unscathed. But the Ivy League Pitcher of the Year was not as lucky in the second inning. After Rumley surrendered a leadoff walk, freshman Chelsea Gonzales put the first pitch she saw over the centerfield fence to put the Sun Devils on the board 2-0.
Rumley recovered and worked out of the inning. The junior turned in a one-two-three inning in the third and fourth with the help of her defense and kept Arizona State from scoring again until the fifth inning. Then, however, the wheels began to come off. The Sun Devils scored six runs on four hits in the bottom of the fifth to end the game with an eight-run mercy rule.
Sophomore Nikki Girard nailed a walk-off two-run home run to end the game 8-0.
“We haven’t seen a lineup that stacked and that deep this year,” Hanson said at the press conference. “There is a reason they are top 10 in the country.”
After San Diego State lost to the No. 13 University of Michigan in extra innings Friday afternoon, the Aztecs and Dartmouth met for the just the third time in program history the next day in an elimination game.
This time, Rumley squared off against O’Toole, who ranks third in the NCAA with 30 wins, and who came off a 138 pitch, 8.2-inning outing against the Wolverines.
Rumley came out firing, striking out the first two batters she faced before getting the Aztecs’ redshirt senior Patrice Jackson to ground out to third. The junior came back in the second with another one-two-three effort with one strikeout.
The top of the second witnessed another Dartmouth first — the Big Green put a runner in scoring position for the first time in the NCAA softball tournament. Ivy League Player of the Year Morgan McCalmon ’16 led off with a base knock to left field. After an error by the San Diego State second baseman, the Big Green had runners on second and third with no out. Alyssa Loyless ’17 came in to pinch run for McCalmon as the Big Green pushed for its first run and lead of the regional, but strikeouts by Rumley and Chloe Madill ’17 and a flyout by Maddie Damore ’17 ended the threat.
San Diego State and Dartmouth remained scoreless until the third inning, when Rumley gave up a three-run homer to junior Kayla Jordan. A two-run homer from redshirt junior Hayley Miles in the fourth put the Aztecs up 5-0, and prompting Hanson to pull Rumley for McCalmon.
SDSU scored two more runs in the fourth off a passed ball and a throwing error to push the score to 7-0 going into the fifth.
San Diego State nearly ended the game in the fifth due to the eight-run mercy rule, but Lohmann had other ideas. In a tournament highlight for the Big Green, the sophomore completed a double play by gunning San Diego State sophomore Kayla Bufardeci down at the plate after catching a fly ball in right field to end the Aztecs’ threat and the inning.
In the sixth, Sissel gave up the game-ending run after Ruiz double scored Downey for the eighth and final run of the game.
O’Toole shut down Dartmouth’s lineup to the tune of two hits and five strikeouts over four innings.
“She kept us off balance with her change of speed,” Hanson said at a post-game press conference. “She has a great change-up.”
O’Toole was pulled when the game’s outcome seemed more secure to provide a small break before San Diego State’s rematch against Michigan.
Despite Dartmouth’s disappointing performance in the NCAA tournament, it was still the most successful in program history. One year after falling to the University of Pennsylvania in the Ivy League Championship Series, Dartmouth dominated Ivy League play this year and established itself as the team to beat next year.
Dartmouth should be well positioned to repeat as Ivy League champions next year, considering its main talent, which includes All-Ivy players Rumley, McCalmon and Katie McEachern ’16, will return next year.
Curosh and St. Romain, the team’s only seniors, are the only two players who will not be returning next year and have witnessed a major transformation in the program throughout their tenure in Hanover. When they were freshmen, the Big Green went 17-22 overall and 10-10 in the Ancient Eight. The next year, the team was 14-25 and 7-13 in the Ivy League.
“From where we started my freshman and sophomore year it was not where we are, to put it nicely,” Curosh said at the postgame press conference after the San Diego State game. “Alex and I both bought into what she was saying, and all her recruits also did. Having that kind of buy-in and working so hard to accomplish something that you have worked for four years to get. It was surreal.”
Nick Guerriero, Assistant Director of Varsity Athletics Communications, declined to make Hanson or athletes available for comment outside of the postgame press conferences in Tempe, Arizona.
