April 23, 2024
The Columbia College softball team played one of their most impressive series of the season on Monday afternoon during their final home games of the year. The Koalas went on to sweep AAC foe Montreat College 5-2 and 7-0 to punch their ticket to next week's AAC Conference Tournament as the #6 seed.
Columbia is now 24-20 on the season and finishes the conference season at 16-12 and in 6th place out of 15 schools in the AAC. CC also finished 15-9 at home this season while scoring 186 runs with 23 home runs.
They will next return to action on Tuesday, April 30 for their opening game of the 2024 AAC Tournament in Kingsport, Tenn. Time and opponent to be announced later this week.
Senior starting pitchers Kylie Smith and Meghan Dennis each pitched complete game victories on Monday. Smith threw a 3-hit shutout in game two with 5 strikeouts and zero walks while Dennis also threw all 7 innings allowing 2 unearned runs and striking out four while walking only one. Dennis improves to 9-8 on the season.
Smith, now 11-9, lowered her team-best ERA to 2.80 with the win while increasing her strikeout total to 62 Ks on the season over 122 innings. Smith also tallied four total hits on the day notching two in each game to increase her team-leading average to .398.
Columbia got out to a 3-0 lead after two innings of game two on back to back RBI singles from outfielders Ruthie Roman and senior MC Sanders. Senior 3B Aislyn Sharp's sacrifice fly then made it 3-0 before Sanders' RBI triple in the 4th and senior 2B Brooklyn Franco's RBI had the Koalas cruising 5-0 after four innings. Columbia then added two more runs in the 6th on a Montreat error as Sanders and Franco scored, who had reached via walk and single respectively.
Smith, Sanders, and Franco each recorded two hits apiece while 1B Aliyah Crawley, Sanders, and Franco each stole two bases as well in game two.
Franco got game one started with an RBI single in the 2nd inning before outfielder Hope Azurdia's two-run single put CC up 3-1 after four innings. After Montreat climbed to within 3-2 after five innings, the Koalas would come back with two insurance runs in the 6th on consecutive RBI singles from Azurdia and Smith.
Sharp, Azurdia, Smith, and Franco led the Koalas with two hits apiece in game one while Sanders and Crawley also recorded singles as part of the 10-hit attack.