It was a hard fought weekend for Penn softball.
The Quakers emerged victorious in what turned into a battle of attrition, sweeping Cornell by identical 9-8 scores underneath the blazing sun at Penn Park on Sunday.
Penn (12-15, 7-4 Ivy) finished its first of three South Division series 3-1 against Cornell (13-19, 5-5), keeping them in — as coach Leslie King speculates — “good position to win [its] division.”
“[This weekend] doesn’t win us anything. We’ve got eight tough games still ahead with Princeton and Columbia, but that was important,” she said. “We just had a lot of resiliency today and that is huge.”
On Saturday, the Quakers split a pair of lopsided games with Cornell, winning the first, 9-0, and losing the second game by the same score. When the teams returned to Penn Park on Sunday afternoon for the last half of their four-game series, they were much more evenly matched, fighting through 15 innings of neck-and-neck play.
Penn’s fought hard for its first victory, coming back from a five-run deficit to win, 9-8.
The Quakers struggled through a particularly long third inning, facing the entire Big Red batting order and letting in five runs. As King put it, “I don’t worry about long innings when you win two games.”
The Red and Blue didn’t let the scoreboard discourage them, though. Freshman right fielder Leah Allen led the rally charge, hitting her eighth home run of the season on the second pitch of the inning. Penn followed Allen’s home run with four hits deep into centerfield to tie the game 7-7.
Cornell regained the lead in the top of the fourth with a home run from sophomore right fielder Michiko McGivney . But the Quakers didn’t give up, tying up the score with an RBI from sophomore outfielder Kanani Datan in the bottom of the fifth inning and holding Cornell scoreless for three more innings.
In the bottom of the eighth inning, Allen hit a rocket deep into centerfield, allowing sophomore shortstop Lauren Li to sprint home with the game-winning run.
The Red and Blue got off to a roaring start in the first inning of the second game, answering Cornell’s two runs with four runs of their own to take the lead. Cornell came back though, chipping away at Penn’s lead and overtaking the Red and Blue.
Just when the Quakers’ bats were getting sleepy in the bottom of the fifth inning, the freshman duo of Allen and first baseman Alexis Sargent launched consecutive home runs over the right field fence, tying up the score at 7-7.
“We just realized that we’re still in it and that we could do it,” Allen said. “It got all of our energy up and we kept it up for the rest of the game.”
After Cornell took back the lead on a home run in the sixth inning, Penn finished off the Sunday sweep with an RBI double by Datan and a go-ahead single by Sargent. Li, who scored the winning run in game one, finished off the win to end the second game on the mound.
King was not surprised by her team’s comeback.
“We believe we can hit the ball and we believe in ourselves,” she said.
Penn’s next test will come on April 16 as they take on Drexel at home at 6:00 p.m. The game against Drexel will be Penn’s last opportunity to hone its play before facing South Division foe Princeton on the road.
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