After a five-hour rain postponement, a 105-minute rain delay, another overnight postponement and 13 innings, one swing of Laura Ashlock's bat finally advanced the University of Charleston softball team in the winners' bracket of the NCAA Division II Atlantic Regional tournament.
Ashlock's 13th home run of the season, coupled with skilled pitching performances from Alli Burdette and Jessie Rowe, gave UC a 2-1 win over Lock Haven on Friday morning at the UC softball complex. The Golden Eagles (46-10) play Kutztown at 2 p.m. Friday. The sixth-seeded Golden Bears (32-15) advanced in the winners' bracket with a 5-4 comeback win over No. 3-seed West Chester. Lock Haven played West Chester directly following the finish of the UC-Lock Haven game.
Kutztown and West Chester were able to dodge the rain drops and play their first-round game on schedule, but UC and Lock Haven weren't so lucky. Thursday's rain got hard enough right before their scheduled start time to push the game from 2:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Then another shower halted the game right before the start of the sixth inning and delayed it another 1 hour, 45 minutes.
Officials sent the two teams home with the game scoreless headed into the 10th inning, to restart at 10 a.m. Friday.
"My pregame chat was pretty simple," UC coach Ray Loeser said. "Fight, fight, fight. Go get it done. And they did."
Ashlock, already the team's single-season record holder for home runs, finished it by drilling a 1-2 pitch off Lock Haven's Bekah Slattery over the left field fence. Ashlock said she was just trying to get a base hit, but quickly knew she had smashed the game winner.
"I think I took one hard step out of the box before I started jogging," she said.
Before that, the Golden Eagles and Bald Eagles were locked in a marathon pitchers' duel. Slattery pitched 12 full innings, striking out 12 and walking four. Burdette fanned 10 in 9 2/3 innings, while Rowe struck out one in 3 1/3 innings.
"We wouldn't have had an opportunity to even make it to the 13th without them," Ashlock said.
A McKenna Garlock double in the 12th scored Faith Ceely and gave Lock Haven a 1-0 lead, but UC answered in the bottom of the 12th with Rachelle Toppings' two-out RBI single to center.