In front of a receptive crowd and under a clear sky, the Virginia softball team (28-8) swept its doubleheader against Penn State yesterday at The Park to successfully complete its romp through the Who's Hoo Tournament.
The initial win, 5-2, over the Nittany Lions secured the Cavaliers' first place finish in the tournament, and the second victory, 8-7, garnered Virginia a 6-0 record in its weekend matchups against Penn State (16-10), Bowling Green (10-10) and Liberty (9-26).
Penn State finished the tournament with a second-place standing and a 3-3 record.
In Virginia's first game against the Nittany Lions, Cavalier junior Kristen Dennis, last week's ACC Player of the Week and Pitcher of the Week, pitched a complete game. She also gave the Cavaliers a sizeable cushion with a fifth-inning homerun that scored center fielder Kelly McCabe and third baseman Ruby Rojas and gave Virginia a 5-0 lead.
The Cavaliers held off two late runs by the Lions to finish the game with a 5-2 win.
"We're hitting the ball hard every time we come out," Dennis said. "We're staying fired up."
In the second game of Sunday's doubleheader, Virginia built an early 4-0 lead, but in the third inning, Penn State began to slowly cut into the margin. Searching for an answer, coach Cheryl Sprangel substituted pitchers twice and finally opted to put Dennis back in the spot that served Virginia so well in the first game.
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But Lions first baseman Erin Norton blasted Dennis' second pitch of the game into left field and sent three players home. The play put Penn State up, 7-6, in the top of the sixth inning, its first lead of the day.
It didn't last long.
Instead, Virginia responded with singles from Dennis and shortstop Heather Field. Dennis and Field then scored on RBIs by first baseman Hannah Owings and pinch-hitter Joanna Barstad, respectively. The sequence put Virginia up for good, 8-7.
"We have so much intensity all the time," said senior right fielder Meaghan Young, who had two hits and two runs in the nightcap game for Virginia. "Even when we were down today, we came back and scored right away. I think that when people are down, other people are going to pick them up because everyone as a team was doing it together."
In addition to the victories over Penn State, the Cavaliers defeated Liberty on Friday, 9-0 and 2-1, and Bowling Green on Saturday, 12-2 and 5-1.
The Cavaliers now have grabbed first place finishes in their last two tournaments and have won 11 straight games.
"We're a young team and at the beginning of the season, we were trying new people out in different positions," Dennis said of the team's recent successes. "Now, I think we've really gelled together and we know how to motivate each other."
Sprangel believes that Virginia's weekend performance indicates a promising future:
"They're all playing together," Sprangel said. "People are picking each other up. That last game [against Penn State] was a total team effort because we threw in three different pitchers and some people stayed in. Some came in. But everyone did their job and everyone is totally unselfish on this team. They're just playing with such confidence that they're pretty unstoppable"
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