Sophomore Sydney Motylinski smashes a 2-run home run in the top of the eighth to lift Softball to a 5-3 win at Muskingum in the deciding Game 3 of OAC Tournament Finals
By Tim Glon
NEW CONCORD — Sophomore Sydney Motylinski (Ida, Mich.) smashed a 2-out, 2-run home run in the top of the eighth inning to lift fourth-seeded Ohio Northern to a 5-3 victory at second-seeded Muskingum in the winner-take-all Game 3 of the Ohio Athletic Conference Tournament Finals on Sunday at Newberry Field.
The Polar Bears (24-18-1 overall) will receive the OAC's automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Tournament. The NCAA Pairings and sites will be announced on Monday at 1 pm on NCAA.com.
The Muskies end their season at 29-14.
Northern won the OAC Tournament title for the sixth time in school history and its second in the last three seasons.
"We were awesome," ONU head coach Jackie Price said. "We just kept playing and had many people step up with big plays. We had big hits on offense, big plays on defense and had outstanding pitching. Up and down the lineup we had ladies making plays. It was a terrific week. I am so proud of the way we kept battling."
In a game full of twists and turns and momentum swings, Northern scored all five of its runs with two out.
The Polar Bears got on the board in the top of the first when junior Lauren Renner (Columbus/Hilliard Bradley) had a two-out single to score senior Abby Davis (New Palestine, Ind.), who led off the game with a walk, from second to make it 1-0.
Davis scored again in the third frame on another 2-out hit. She again drew a walk and scored on a two-out triple into the right field corner by junior Abby Elliott (Loveland/Ursuline).
The Muskies rallied however and took advantage of two Polar Bear errors in the bottom of the fifth to score three runs and take a 3-2 lead.
Renner had a two-out double in the top of the sixth that hit two-thirds of the way up the left center field fence, but ONU was unable to get the equalizer and went into the seventh frame still trailing 3-2.
Senior Gabby Stewart (Sunbury/Big Walnut) reached on an error with one out in the top of the seventh and sophomore pinch-runner Lauren Walls (Grove City) scored from second on a dropped fly ball deep in the right field corner off the bat of senior Brady Guest (Convoy/Crestview) to tie the game at 3-3 and send the game into extra innings.
In the top of the eighth, Renner had a two-out single, leading up to Motylinski's 2-run shot to left to make it 5-3.
Northern also turned in a pair of double plays on defense to keep the Muskies within striking distance.
Despite committing two errors in the bottom of the fifth, ONU turned in its first double play to slow down the initial MU rally.
MU still had the bases loaded with no outs and already plated a run in the fifth when sophomore Annika Murray (Hilliard/Bradley) fielded a ground ball, tagged the runner at first and threw to first for the double play leaving just a runner on third with two out.
The Muskies led off the home half of the third with a double and used a sac bunt to move her to third with one out.
Motylinski fielded a hard-hit ground ball at third base, tagged out the Muskie runner diving back into the bag and threw to first for the inning-ending double play and keeping the score at 3-2.
Renner finished the day 3-for-4 with a run and an RBI and had three of ONU's six hits.
Another star of the show for Ohio Northern was junior pitcher Stacey Walters (Sunbury/Big Walnut), who allowed only one earned run and five hits in the complete-game victory to improve to 15-5 on the season.
Walters started four times and appeared in all five games in the OAC Tournament, allowing only four earned runs in 30 innings of work with 15 strikeouts for a 0.93 ERA.
On Saturday, ONU won the opener 7-0 and MU took the nightcap 6-3, forcing a deciding Game 3.
