St. John Fisher Softball Regains Empire 8 Title
For the third time in the last four years, St. John Fisher College has won the Empire 8 Conference Softball Championship.
The Cardinals defeated Rochester Institute of the Technology 2-1 on Sunday in the final game of the four-team, double-elimination tournament.
It was the third straight day the two schools have faced each other. Third-seeded Fisher defeated No. 2 RIT 6-3 on Friday in the tournament’s first game. On Saturday, RIT forced a final game with an 8-4 win over the Cardinals.
With the win, Fisher, who won the Empire 8 title in both 2008 and 2009, earns an automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Championship. Regional pairings will be announced on Monday at noon and Fisher should be playing fairly close to home. Both SUNY Cortland and Ithaca College were named as regional sites last month.
Senior Jamie Harmon was named as the Championship’s Most Outstanding Player. The catcher drove in the game-winning run and made a spectacular catch in foul territory to end an RIT rally in Sunday's finale. She batted .417 for the four-game tourney with two runs scored and two RBI.
Fisher’s Sarah Stefanon earned her third win of the weekend. The sophomore pitcher raised her record to 13-4 on Sunday, pitching seven innings with no earned runs, while allowing just six hits.
Fisher never trailed in Sunday’s title tilt. Leanne Merchant hit her 10th home run over the season, tying the College’s single-season record, to give her team a 1-0 lead in the second inning.
The Tigers tied it in the fifth, scoring an unearned run.
Fisher, however, scored the game’s final run in the top of the sixth. With two outs, Kayla Goodberlet doubled to left-center and Harmon knocked her in, with an RBI-single to right-center.
The Tigers placed two runners on base in both the sixth and seventh innings with one out, but Stefanon worked her way out of trouble in both instances.
In the sixth, with runners on second and third and one out, Stefanon induced an infield pop-up, and Harmon, Fisher’s catcher, made the inning’s final out, making a difficult catch at the backstop.
The Tigers had runners on first and second with one out in the seventh, but Stefanon struck her fourth batter of the day and RIT’s cleanup hitter popped out to the shortstop to end the game.
With the win, Fisher improves to 28-12-1, while R.I.T. falls to 24-12. The win marked the 601st of head coach Len Maiorani’s career.
“We’re very excited to be representing the Empire 8 Conference in NCAAs,” said Maiorani, who hasn’t had a losing season in his 17 years at the College. “We have a great group of young women with tremendous leadership from our seniors and it’s great to see their hard work pay off.”