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Penn's Veronica Richardson knocked in the winning run in the ninth inning of yesterday's nightcap. Her sacrifice fly scored Jen Moore for the 2-1 win. (Stefan Miltchev/The Daily Pennsylvanian)

As the sun set over Warren field last night, the Penn softball team still stood on the field in their day-game shorts. It was a long day, to say the least. Penn played two games, 17 innings and four hours of softball. And after all that, the Quakers walked away with a split against Lehigh . The Engineers (12-10) outlasted the Quakers, 7-6, in the opener before Penn (10-15) rebounded to claim a 2-1 nine-inning victory in the literal nightcap. Both teams seemed to have exhausted their offense in the first game. In the finale, each mustered only one run until the ninth. The Quakers defense played solidly behind the stellar pitching of freshman Nicki Borgstadt. Borgstadt sparkled on the mound, holding Lehigh to seven hits and only one run. "Nicki's performance was excellent," Kashow said. "She kept the ball down and shut down a potent offense. She's a freshman doing un-freshman-like things." Borgstadt was aided by the left-side infield tandem of Crista Farrell and Jen Moore, who gobbled up ground balls at key points in the game to preserve the tie. Borgstadt also pitched in with the glove, cutting a runner down at the plate with the bases loaded in the ninth. Penn's offensive support came from two other newcomers, freshmen Veronica Richardson and Erin O'Brien. O'Brien, who has been on a tear of late, doubled Deb Kowalchuk across the plate in the first inning. Penn did not score again until the bottom of the ninth, when Richardson lofted a sacrifice fly to score junior Jen Moore for a dramatic walk-off victory. "Our kiddie corps are certainly pulling their weight," Kashow said. "They've stepped right in and I think it bodes well for the team." Penn sent ace Becky Ranta, who was riding a two game winning streak, to the mound for the Quakers' first game against the Engineers. The sophomore pitcher didn't get the defensive support that Borgstadt did, as only two of the seven runs Ranta allowed were earned. "Becky had a great game off the mound," Penn co-captain Lindsay Wagner said. "We were hurt by the five errors." Richardson tied up the game at six in the bottom of the seventh with an RBI sacrifice fly, but Penn couldn't hang on for the win. "We had them and then let them get away," Penn coach Carol Kashow said. "We didn't start scoring until the fifth, but we scored a bunch. "Six runs should be an easy win for us. This is one of the best defenses that I've ever coached, but they haven't played like it consistently." The Quakers say that they won't be satisfied until they can start winning more than one half of each of their doubleheaders. "Winning the second game in extra innings was satisfying," Penn junior Clarisa Apostol said. "But it was still disappointing to lose the first."

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