Shippensburg baseball team completes sweep of Kutztown
SHIPPENSBURG –The Shippensburg University baseball team picked up its third series sweep of divisional play Saturday by posting a pair of victories over Kutztown, defeating the Golden Bears 2-0 and 7-5 in Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Eastern Division action.
Shippensburg (18-20, 12-6 PSAC East) got a two-hit shutout in the seven-inning opener of the doubleheader by junior Noah Nabholz (Pottsville/Pottsville), the first complete-game shutout of his career. Nabholz scattered two singles and two walks and struck out five.
The Raiders rallied from a pair of deficits in Game two with timely hitting and seven stolen bases – the most stolen bases in a single game by the team in 11 years (nine on March 12, 2011 vs. Clarion).
Junior Justin Darden (Mountain Top/Crestwood) had a strong day at the plate, particularly in Game 2. He finished the day 4-for-7 with a solo home run, double, two RBIs and three runs. Freshman Carter Hinds (Warrington/Central Bucks South) had three hits and two runs, while sophomore Joe Barbera (Harrisburg/Bishop McDevitt) reached base three times and had two of the team’s seven stolen bases.
The doubleheader win over Kutztown followed a 7-3 Shippensburg win over the Golden Bears on Friday.
Shippensburg sits third in the PSAC Eastern Division standings with three weekends of conference play remaining. SU will continue its homestand with four games at Fairchild Field, beginning with a 3 p.m. game Tuesday against Pitt-Johnstown.
Shippensburg U. softball teams splits with IUP
SHIPPENSBURG — The Shippensburg University softball team nearly completed a late comeback in Game 2 against IUP on Saturday, but had to settle for a split with the Crimson Hawks in a Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) crossover doubleheader.
SU won Game 1, 6-1, and IUP won Game 2, 6-5 on a sunny but breezy day at Robb Field.
Shippensburg (22-14) totaled 20 hits in the doubleheader while IUP (14-12) totaled 17 hits. All nine Raider starters had at least one hit in the doubleheader, including three hits from senior Morgan DeFeo (West Grove/Avon Grove), freshman Katelyn Minney (Lititz/Warwick), and senior Lacey Hunter (Centreville, Va./Centreville). Minney reached base four times, including a double and a triple, while Hunter had two doubles and a triple – both players each had two RBIs. Sophomore Maelynn Leber (Wrightsville/Eastern York) had three RBIs.
Freshman Alicia Ball (Woodstock, Va./Central) started in the circle for the Raiders in Game 1 and threw 2.1 innings in Game 2. She allowed three runs (two were unearned) and struck out 10 Crimson Hawks over the course of the doubleheader. Sophomore Emma Flattery (Macomb, Mich./Dakota) came in as a relief pitcher in Game 2 and threw 4.1 innings and struck out five.
Shippensburg will host Pitt-Johnstown at 2 p.m. Tuesday for a non-conference doubleheader at Robb Field.
Shippensburg men’s relay team edges Penn State in photo finish
LEWISBURG — The Shippensburg University men’s outdoor track & field team had its 4×100-meter relay team defeat Penn State’s ‘A’ relay on Saturday in a photo finish at the 2022 Bison Outdoor Classic to highlight a successful final day of competition at Bucknell’s Christy Mathewson Memorial Stadium.
The quartet of Stephon Brown (Harrisburg/Central Dauphin East), Mo Whittle (Tobyhanna/Pocono Mountain West), Aaron Arp Jr. (Harrisburg/Central Dauphin East) and Eric Kirk (Coatesville/Coatesville Area) ran 40.72 seconds to edge the Nittany Lions and break the Bucknell facility record (40.77 seconds by Cornell in 2021) in the process. To define the victor, the finish was delineated to the thousandths of a second – SU was timed at 40.717 seconds and PSU was timed at 40.720 seconds.
The time is an NCAA-provisional qualifier that gets the Raiders on the national leaderboard for the event. SU will need to improve by a few tenths of a second in an effort to qualify for a second straight year for the NCAA National Championships. The Raiders are seeking to build off an All-America seventh-place finish in the event at 2021 nationals. SU’s 2021 season best and school record was 40.56 seconds.
Individually, Brown matched the NCAA provisional standard in the open 100 meters with a fourth-place time of 10.55 seconds that established a new personal best for the C.D. East alumnus. Kirk ran 10.70 seconds, which resulted in an eighth-place finish. Whittle sprinted to a season-best time of 10.88 seconds.
