Baseball rally falls short; softball team suffers shutout

Youngstown State

HARRISONBURG, Va. — The Youngstown State baseball team cut an 8-1 deficit to one before James Madison’s third home run of the day helped preserve an 11-7 victory Wednesday at Long Field/Mauck Stadium.

The Dukes led 8-1 through three innings before the Penguins started their comeback bid. YSU scored three runs in the fourth and three more in the eighth, but a three-run homer by Matt Townsend in the bottom of the eighth gave the Dukes some breathing room.

John Koehnlein and Eric Marzec had two hits apiece, and Jacke Healey had two RBIs and scored twice for YSU. Townsend finished with three hits, three runs scored and three RBIs to lead James Madison.

The Dukes scored four runs in the first and two in the second off Marzec, and they added two more on Ryan Messmer in the third. Messmer settled down and retired nine straight batters, including 15 of the final 19 he faced. He allowed two one-out singles in the eighth, and Townsend greeted Aaron Swenson with a three-run homer.

Marzec was charged with the loss, allowing six runs in two innings in his first start on the mound since April 3, 2007. Evan Scott earned his first win of the season in four tries, allowing four runs on five hits in seven innings.

After playing six games in the past five days, the Penguins are off today. They will wrap up their spring trip on Friday with the start of a three-game series at Marshall. First pitch at the Kennedy Center is set for 3 p.m.

Softball

KISSIMMEE, Fla. — The Youngstown State softball team (1-11) tallied just two hits in a 6-0 loss to SIU-Edwardsville and five in a 4-2 loss to IPFW on Wednesday at the Rebel Spring Games at the Osceola County Softball Complex.

SIU-Edwardsville’s Kaitlin Colosimo fired a two-hit complete-game shutout with 11 strikeouts in the Penguins’ first game.

Freshman Jordan Ingalls tossed a complete game, scattering eight hits.

Ingalls and junior Autumn Grove had the Penguins’ only two hits.

Against IPFW, junior Cheryl Cale scattered eight hits in a

complete-game perormance and allowed just one earned run as the

Penguins were bitten with the error bug.

The Mastodons plated an unearned run in the top of the first and three more runs, two of which were unearned, in the top of the third to take a 4-0 lead.