Through 10 innings, everything was going great for the Penn softball team yesterday.
In a doubleheader against Yale, Penn's pitchers had put the Elis' bats to sleep, and the Quakers had managed to get a few of their own runners around.
Penn had already earned a 2-0 shutout of the Elis in the first game, and it looked like game two would be another low scoring affair.
But then the floodgates opened. Yale scored five in the fifth to knock junior starter Olivia Mauro out of the game, and the Quakers' offense couldn't put anything else together.
Penn ended up losing Game 2 in a rout, 14-2, after things got out of hand in the top of the seventh as Yale (22-14, 1-3 Ivy) plated eight.
The loss gave the Quakers (13-19, 2-4) a split against the Elis in a makeup of Saturday's rained-out doubleheader.
"I definitely feel like we should have taken two today," junior Stephanie Reichert said. "We didn't underestimate them. We knew they would come out fired up from their play against Princeton Sunday."
By the end of Yale's offensive attack, Penn's three-part pitching staff had run out of gas.
With Permar unable to record the final out in the seventh and the team out of options, coach Leslie King elected to give junior Casey Hare, who had not pitched since her freshman year, a try on the mound for the game's final out.
Pitching wasn't the only factor which hurt the Quakers. Penn committed five errors in the second game, leading to four unearned runs.
But according to Reichert, the lack of hitting in pressure situations that let the game get away.
Junior right fielder Melissa Haffner agreed.
"In the second game we just needed to get base runners around," she said. "We got them on, and they were in scoring position, and we just couldn't perform."
The Quakers had five more runners on base than in the first game, but failed to score more runs.
Still, until the final three frames, the day belonged to Penn.
In Game 1, freshman pitcher Emily Denstedt pitched a complete game shutout, her second in as many days.
"She did an amazing job," Mauro said. "She's done a great job this entire weekend. We're really proud of her, especially being a freshman, just being able to come out there during Ivy games when it really counts and make a difference."
On the other side of the ball, Penn got on the board right away when leadoff hitter Stephanie Reichert doubled and was driven in two batters later on a sacrifice fly by sophomore Annie Kinsey.
Haffner added a solo shot to lead off the fifth to give Penn an insurance run, but it proved to be more than enough as Denstedt continued her dominance.
After splitting the two Ivy series, the Quakers travel to Villanova today for their third doubleheader in as many days.
"We're going to be tired, but we can't let it show," Mauro said. "We just have to come out there like any other day."
