Through the first three weeks of the current spring season, the College of Southern Maryland softball team is off to a perfect start as the Hawks improved to 7-0 following a sweep of visiting Orange County Monday afternoon on a sunny, breezy afternoon in La Plata.
CSM (7-0) has benefited from stellar hitting, solid pitching and a stout defense through its first seven contests this spring and all were clearly on display on March 18 when the Hawks swept Orange County 11-0 and 12-2. Five different Hawks homered on Monday, pitchers Laci Wood and Kayla Twigg both tossed complete games and CSM turned a rare triple play in the second game.
“This group of girls is really talented and they work really hard in practice,” CSM first-year coach Keith Sanderson said. “It doesn’t matter how much talent you have, you still have to have chemistry and these girls really get along well with each other. We’ve got a really good hitting team and defensively we’ve turned a number of double plays and today we even turned a triple play.”
In the Monday opener, CSM scored four runs in the home half of the first inning, added another run in third then broke the game open by scoring six times in the fourth, exactly one-half of them on a three-run homer from sophomore Madison Jury. Like most of her teammates on Monday, Jury contributed to the sweep both at the plate and in the field.
“We have a lot of girls on this team that can hit,” said Jury, who played in the outfield in the first game then caught at home in the second. “We also have a really good defensive team. It’s been a great start to the season. We have a lot of fun playing together.”
CSM started the second game in identical fashion, plating four runs in the bottom of the first then Twigg yielded a pair of runs in the top of the second. The Hawks then countered with a run in the second, added two more in the third and two more in the fifth when they were claimed a 9-2 lead and were on the cusp of ending the game early via the mercy rule.
After CSM freshman Lexi Drayer, a Calvert alumna, was intentionally walked to load the bases, Raelynn Hood flew out to center to end the fifth. After staving off a merciful ending two innings early, Orange County briefly made things interesting in the top of the sixth by loading the bases with no outs against Twigg. But the drama would soon take a different form.
Twigg immediately induced Aryssia Clune to hit a sharp grounder to Drayer at third, who threw home to Jury for the first out then Jury pivoted and threw to Abby Norris at first for the second. Typically, the Hawks would have been content with a double play but Molly Martin attempted to score from second on the play and Norris threw home to Jury to get the sliding Martin to complete an improbable and rare 5-2-3-2 triple play.
“I had never been involved in a triple play,” Drayer said. “I was just looking to get the out at home on the play. When I threw home to get the lead runner, Maddy knew she had a chance to turn two and then we ended up getting three outs on that play. That was exciting, especially after they put me on intentionally the previous inning.”
CSM will look to maintain its perfect start to the season on Saturday when the Hawks host Allegany College of Maryland, then travel to Westmoreland County Community College on Monday then return home to complete the March portion of their 2024 schedule by hosting Frederick Community College in another twin bill at the La Plata campus.
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