When it returned to action last week, the Baldwinsville softball team was at the .500 mark (7-7) overall, and wanted to consolidate the gains it had made so far without slipping too far back.
Against Auburn last Tuesday afternoon, the Bees outplayed the Maroons most of the way, but one big swing changed everything in a 5-4 defeat.
Auburn won the first meeting between these teams 8-1 on April 24. The rematch, 11 days later, saw Keeana Wolcik take a 1-0 lead to the bottom of the third inning.
But then the Maroons loaded the bases, and Chloe Calhoun stepped to the plate. All that Calhoun did was crush a pitch over the fence for a grand slam, the main part of a five-run inning that put B’ville behind.
Still trailing 5-1 going into the top of the sixth, the Bees pulled within one thanks to a three-run rally, and with Emma Bernet pitching well in relief of Wolcik, B’ville had a chance to get even in the seventh – but Auburn’s Taylor Stearns tossed a scoreless frame to help her team hang on.
Brooke Carlisle, in defeat, earned two hits and two RBIs, while Mackenzie Carhart had three hits as she and Elizabeth Johns earned one RBI apiece. Gabby Hahn contributed a double and scored a run, joning Wolcik, Serena Capsello and Caroline May in that run-scoring column.
Back home on Thursday, B’ville took on Cicero-North Syracuse, whom it beat 4-1 on April 16 at the Gillette Road complex. But the rematch had a different ending, the Northstars fighting past the Bees by a 4-2 margin.
For six innings, Wolcik and her C-NS counterpart, Megan Tully, went at it, neither pitcher surrendering a run. Though each side would get runners on base, Wolcik, who finished with 10 strikeouts, and Tully, who struck out six, kept working out of trouble.
The break came in the top of the seventh, when the Northstars got to Wolcik for four runs, two of them driven home on Lauren Floyd’s single. To its credit, the Bees tried to answer in the bottom of the seventh, with Sara Lalla’s RBI and runs scored by Carhart and Jordan Barbato, but C-NS held on.
