Courtesy Williams Sports Information

RALEIGH, N.C. - St. Thomas scored two unearned runs in the bottom of the sixth inning Friday to snap a 3-3 tie and send the Williams College softball team to a 5-3 loss in its opener of the 2006 NCAA Div. III National Finals Tournament.

The Ephs (30-9) saw their school record 20-game win streak come to an end and tasted defeat for the first time since April 2. They will face Linfield (Ore.) in an elimination game Saturday at 1:30 p.m.

The Wildcats (35-10) fell to second-seeded Muskingum in Friday's late game, 3-0.

"I think we’re disappointed at the missed opportunity," Ephs head coach Kris Herman said. "That’s the immediate emotion. Now, we just have to play ballgames, it’s going to be our last weekend no matter what. We have four seniors, so we’re going to try to play the best ball we can. It has to be one pitch at a time, one game at a time. We wouldn’t say that all the time if it weren’t true."

The Tommies (46-2) scored three times in the first inning to take a 3-0 lead, but first-year Emily Fowler-Cornfeld sparked a Williams comeback with a two-run home run to left field off St. Thomas starter Maria Bye, a First Team All-America, in the top of the second.
That shot helped inject the Ephs with the kind of confidence it takes to win on the national stage.

"I couldn’t be more pleased with how our team played today," said senior Christine "Twink" Williams. "When we got down, no one thought for a second the game was over. After Emily hit that bomb, everyone was like 'this is it, we can take these guys.' I think it was like a huge breakthrough for our team psychologically."

The game stayed 3-2 through four innings, thanks in part to some gutsy pitching from Eph senior Clara Hard. The Tommies loaded the bases with one out in the fourth, but Hard induced Nikki Conway, also a First Team All-American who leads the Tommies with 15 home runs, to foul out to catcher Katie Powers. Hard then induced a groundout from Bye to end the inning. The first out of that frame came when Powers threw out Tommie Fiona Lodge trying to steal second.

The Ephs tied the game in the fifth inning when Kristen Lemons led off with a single off Janet Nagle, who had relieved Bye in the fourth. Lemons took second on an error on the play and advanced to third when Joey Lye dropped down a sacrifice bunt.

Laura Noel then ripped a liner to first that Carrie Embree snared for the second out, but when Embree tried to double Lemons off of third, the throw bounced away, allowing her to score the tying run.

Lye helped keep the game tied in the sixth when she went deep into the shortstop hole and snared a one-hop laser off the bat of Ashley Carlblom, then threw her out at first on close play. Two batters later she ranged to her left to snag a liner off the bat of Janet Nagle.

But the Tommies broke through in the bottom of the sixth when Lodge led off with a single and took second on a wild pitch. After an out, Missy Bruggeman hit a grounder to Williams at third. She looked Lodge back to second, but the high throw to first went off the top of Noel's glove, putting runners on second and third with one out.

That brought up Embree, who hit a shallow fly to center which fell for an RBI-single.

"I just wanted to put the ball in play, we had runners in scoring position and I wanted to be up at bat," Embree said. "Each at bat I saw where she (Hard)was throwing me, so I kind of got in rhythm with that and then decided to swing if she put it anywhere in the strike zone."
Bruggeman added an insurance run by scoring on a passed ball. Then Nagle set the Ephs down 1-2-3 in the top of the seventh to end the game.

EPH NOTES: Fowler-Cornfeld's homer run off Bye in the second was her first collegiate dinger. It came in her first at-bat since April 29 and was her first hit since April 26. The blast was also the first-year's first over-the-fence home run of her career.

"It was an outside pitch that I just swung as hard as I could at," said Fowler-Cornfeld. "I was going up there swinging. She threw me two rise balls before that, but I think the pitch I hit was a curve."

Junior Katelyn Knox set up the home run by hustling down the first base line to reach after her grounder to second was misplayed ... first-year Libby Copeland-Halperin celebrated her birthday Friday ... Hard kept the Tommies in the yard, something that's not easy to do. Entering play Friday, they had hit an NCAA Div. III record 69 home runs in 47 games.