ST. PAUL, Minn. – The No. 22-ranked St. Olaf College softball program clinched an outright Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) regular-season championship by sweeping Hamline University by scores of 4-1 and 9-3 on Monday afternoon at Meredith Field.
St. Olaf (21-3, 19-1 MIAC) entered the day needing one win to secure a share of the title and two wins to earn it outright. After winning the first game, the Oles trailed Hamline (6-22, 3-19 MIAC), 3-1, after five innings in game two before rallying in the late innings to claim the title with two games remaining.
The regular-season championship is the fifth in program history and the first since 1996. The Oles shared the 1985 title with St. Thomas before earning outright titles in 1992, 1995, and 1996.
With the two wins, St. Olaf also secured the No. 1 seed and the right to host the four-team double-elimination portion of the MIAC Playoffs from May 14-16.
No. 22 St. Olaf 4, Hamline 1 | Box Score
After being named the MIAC Softball Player and Pitcher of the Week earlier in the afternoon, Graf and Matthies led St. Olaf to a win in the opener. Graf went the distance in the circle to pick up her 16th victory of the season, while Matthies drove in three of the Oles' four runs with a pair of hits.
Graf limited the Pipers to one run on two hits with two walks and 13 strikeouts in her 12th complete game in 15 starts this spring. Matthies had an RBI double in the first and a two-run single in the fifth in her 11th multi-RBI game of the season.
St. Olaf got on the board in the first half inning, as
Kaleigh Santmyer got on with a two-out single and scored on Matthies' double to deep center field. The Oles added a second run in the top of the third when
Tarah DeCroock singled with one out and scored on a double by
Ally Bode to the gap in right center.
Hamline scored its lone run of the game in the bottom of the fourth on a one-out RBI single by Theresa Klinnert. Down by just one, the Pipers threatened to tie the game with the bases loaded and only one out, but Graf got a pair of swinging strikeouts to start a stretch where she retired the final 11 batters of the game.
In the next half inning, St. Olaf scored a pair of insurance runs on a two-out single up the middle by Matthies.
Hannah Peschel and
Kaelin Sbrocco got on base to start the inning and later scored on Matthies' two-out single that came with two outs after Santmyer drew a walk to load the bases.
No. 22 St. Olaf 9, Hamline 3 | Box Score
Hamline led by a 3-1 margin after five innings in game two before St. Olaf scored five in the sixth and three in the seventh to secure the outright MIAC regular-season title and the No. 1 seed in the MIAC Playoffs.
Down by two with two innings to go, the Oles took the lead in the top of the sixth with five runs on five hits. St. Olaf tied the game on a run-scoring ground out by
Annie Landon and a fielder's choice off the bat of DeCroock. Three batters later, Matthies delivered the go-ahead two-run double to center to make it a 5-3 game and
Shreya Ashok followed with an RBI triple down the right-field line to cap the five-run inning.
St. Olaf tacked on three more runs in the seventh, scoring on RBI singles by DeCroock and Bode and a Hamline error. After entering the game with one out in the fifth, Graf picked up the win with 2.2 innings of one-hit relief and struck out six.
Seven Oles had multiple hits in the game as St. Olaf racked up 18 hits in the win.
Maya Patty and
Abby Grismer had three hits apiece, while DeCroock, Bode, Santmyer, Matthies, and Ashok all had two.
St. Olaf scored the first run of the game in the top of the first on an RBI single by Santmyer after DeCroock led off the game with a single and stole second. The Pipers capitalized on a pair of Ole errors in the bottom of the third to take a 2-1 lead and added another in the fifth to go up by two before St. Olaf's bats awoke in the final two innings.
Carly Dammann worked the first 4.1 innings in the circle for the Oles before turning the ball over to Graf in the fifth.
St. Olaf visits the University of St. Thomas to close out the regular season on Wednesday, May 5. First pitch is at 3:30 p.m. in St. Paul. The Tommies have already clinched a spot in the six-team MIAC Playoffs but still have seeding to play for.
