Softball celebrates Senior Day with sweep of Baldwin-Wallace

By Tim Glon

ADA — The Ohio Northern softball team celebrated Senior day with a 6-3, 4-1 sweep of Baldwin-Wallace on a chilly Saturday afternoon at the ONU Softball Field.

The Polar Bears improve to 21-7 overall and are 12-2 in Ohio Athletic Conference play, while the Yellow Jackets fall to 17-17, 5-9.

Northern clinched a spot in the 4-team OAC Tournament and needs just one victory or one John Carroll loss in the final four games to clinch its fourth consecutive OAC Regular Season title and the No. 1 seed in the OAC Tournament for the fourth straight year.

The OAC Tournament is slated for May 4-5 at the home of the regular season champion.

Senior Cassie Gaye and sophomore Christin Miller each collected three hits and freshman Jamie Westinkirchner drove in four runs on the day to lead the Polar Bear offense.

In Game 1, Gaye went 2-for-2 with three runs scored as ONU scored two runs in each of the second, fourth and fifth innings.

Westinkirchner had a sacrifice fly to cap a 2-run second frame to give ONU a quick 2-0 lead.

Leading 2-1, Westinkirchner and sophomore Colleen Baliga had back-to-back RBI singles and Northern's lead was 4-1.

B-W scored two runs of its own in the top of the fifth to pull within 4-3.

Senior Katie Cretin had an RBI double and junior Ashley Sujkowski followed with a sacrifice fly to extend the lead to 6-3.

Junior Abbey Bensing scattered nine hits and struck out seven to earn the win and improve to 8-4 on the season.

In Game 2, Westinkirchner drilled a 2-run double in the bottom of the second to give ONU all of the runs its would need to complete the sweep.

Baldwin-Wallace again pulled within 2-1 in the top of the third and the score stayed that way until Ohio Northern picked up two insurance runs in the fifth.

Senior Lisa Light led off the inning with a double to deep center field and eventually scored on an error.

Miller scored from third on an RBI single by freshman Kelly Sheridan and ONU's lead was 4-1.

Junior Katy Newman improved to 8-3 with the complete-game 3-hitter.

The Polar Bears will return to action Sunday with a non-conference double header at No. 16-ranked Trine (Ind.) at 1 pm.