MOBILE, Ala. – Coastal Carolina softball coach Kelley Green wanted her team to get off to a fast start in postseason play.
“To start a single-elimination game, loser go home, to get a couple of runs under your belt early on, it just relaxes everyone,” Green said. “That’s really important for our young squad.”
Her ninth-seeded Chanticleer team took those desires to heart, collecting five hits in the first inning and scoring all of its runs in the first two innings on the way to a 5-0 victory over No. 8 seed ULM here Tuesday in the opening game of the Sun Belt Conference Softball Championships.
The Chanticleers (22-27) got hits from six of their first nine hitters in support of starting pitcher Kaitlin Beasley-Polko, who checked the Warhawks (27-27) on four hits and struck out six. The graduate student took a no-hitter into the fifth inning in improving to 13-9.
Her job was made easier when five of Coastal’s first six hitters had base hits in the first inning off ULM starter Victoria Abrams (7-10), who was relieved after those six batters. Relief pitcher Adrianna Chavarria got two outs to get out of the inning, but was tagged with a series of illegal pitch calls in the second inning that forced Warhawk coach Molly Fichtner to bring on third pitcher Kinsey Kackley.
Kackley gave up a two-out, two-run double to Chanticleer third baseman Keirstin Roose that made it a 5-0 game. From that point on, Kackley allowed only two singles and struck out six, but the Chanticleer bats had already done all the damage they needed.
“She did awesome,” Fichtner said of Kackley. “Earlier in the season when we played them, she didn’t do as well as Victoria did, so going into it we thought Victoria had the best chance to win. When we made the change and went to Rocky (Chavarria) and then she was getting called for illegal pitches, Kinsey came in and did a great job.”
Coastal, which lost all three games to ULM in their regular-season series, got RBI singles from Riley Zana and Maddy Jennings in the five-hit first inning. Then, after two outs, a pair of walks and a wild pitch that scored Abbey Montoya, Roose laced her second hit of the game over the head of ULM left fielder Kennedy Page for the final two runs.
“I think we always emphasize getting off to a fast start,” Green said. “We know when we score first, good things happen. I was really pleased with how well our adjustments worked. The Abrams kid throws hard, and we were able to get on time with her.”
Beasley-Polko gave up two walks in the first two innings, but didn’t allow another baserunner until Madelyn Fletcher led off the fifth with a single to right field. ULM loaded the bases in that innings and collected two more hits in the sixth, but Beasley-Polko stranded all five runners.
“Just mixing up pitches, locations, movements, throwing hard,” Green said of Beasley-Polko. “She didn’t really have to utilize her off-speed too much today. She was certainly inducing some swings and misses. I thought she controlled her ball height really well at times and made it tough on them.”
“Our hitting’s been kind of hit and miss,” Fichtner said. “In postseason you have to have great starting pitching which we didn’t have today, and you have to have clutch hitting which we also didn’t have. I would like to see a little bit more fight from our team knowing we still had seven innings to play. The beauty of our team is we have everybody coming back, but there’s also the Achilles heel of we have nobody that’s thinking it’s their last game.”
Roose, Riley and Iyania DeJesus each had two hits for the Chanticleers, who advance to face No. 1 seed Louisiana in Wednesday’s 10 a.m. opening game of the tournament’s double-elimination bracket. Fletcher had a pair of hits to lead the Warhawks, who finished the season with their most wins since 2017.