By Jacob Plecker. BOONE, N.C. — The App State Softball team saw an opposite-field home run by sophomore Macy Hamby in the sixth inning, but a three-run second inning by the Georgia Southern was all the Eagles needed to win the game, 4-1, on March 23.
GSU used solid pitching performances to win both the game and the 3-game weekend series. App State was held hitless until the bottom of the third inning in game 3 and only tallied three hits on the day.
Hamby’s home run marked App State’s (10-20, 1-5 SBC) fifth home run of the weekend and helped break the Georgia Southern (20-13, 4-2 SBC) shutout bid. Hamby became the fourth different Mountaineer to hit a home run at the newly constructed Sywassink/Lloyd Family Stadium, joining Madison McIntyre, Leah Gore and Makayla McClain, who each hit homers on Saturday.
After seeing the Eagles take a four-run lead in the fourth inning, the Mountaineers turned to Sophie Moshos to keep App State within striking distance by posting 3.1 innings of scoreless relief. The lefty allowed just one hit in her outing while striking out three Eagle batters, moving her within one strikeout of eclipsing 400 career strikeouts at the collegiate level. For the weekend, Moshos posted a 1.50 ERA in 9.1 innings of work and tallied her sixth win of the year on Saturday.
Summer Simpson racked up another hit against the Eagles, marking her fourth knock of the three-game set. Her two-out single in the third inning helped extend her hitting streak to five straight games. Julia Girk stroked the Mountaineers’ third hit of the ballgame in the fifth inning, which was her second hit of the series.
How it Happened
On the final day of the three-game set between the Eagles and Mountaineers, Sejal Neas took the ball first and posted a scoreless first inning by working around a pair of singles. App State went quietly in its half of the first and Georgia Southern scored three runs in the top of the second to take a three-run lead. All three of the Eagles’ runs came with two outs.
Alana Barnard, who recorded the win on Sunday, sat down the Mountaineers in order in the bottom of the second, but Neas bounced back in the top of the third to keep the Eagles off the board. The senior worked around a lead-off double to do so.
App State tallied its first hit of the game in the third inning thanks to a sharply hit single by Simpson. The Eagles retired the first two hitters of the inning before Simpson shot one up the middle. Nothing came of the hit as Georgia Southern retired the next hitter to keep its three-run advantage.
The Eagles struck again in the top of the fourth inning to take a four-run lead. The inning started with a single and after two outs recorded by Bel Varadi, who relieved Neas at the beginning of the inning, Georgia Southern scored its fourth and final run to make it 4-0 after three and a half frames.
Needing to answer, the Mountaineers saw a walk to Grace Barrett to give them a one-out baserunner, but a fielder’s choice and a strikeout ended the threat with the Eagles still holding a four-run lead.
Moshos, who came on to pitch in the fourth inning, threw up a zero in the fifth inning and App State generated its first scoring chance of the game to lead off the bottom half. Girk reached base on an infield hit and McIntyre hustled through the bag to beat out a grounder to second, which put two on for Hannah Forbes with no one out. But the Eagle defense clamped down and made two straight nice plays to keep App State off the scoreboard.
A 1-2-3 sixth inning by Moshos helped bring the Mountaineer bats back to the plate immediately, and Hamby paid off the shutdown inning with a solo homer into the Eagle bullpen to break the shutout. It was her second home run of the year and first since Feb. 16. The Eagles made a pitching change after the homer and sat down three in a row to close the inning.
The Mountaineer defense posted another perfect inning in the top of the seventh, which kept their deficit to three as play entered the final half-inning. App State saw a two-out walk drawn by Forbes, but the Eagle defense held serve and won the game 4-1.
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