Eastern’s softball team fell to Southern Illinois-Edwardsville in the series finale between the in-state conference rivals. SIU-E won two-of-three games they played against Eastern this season.

Panther ace Stephanie Maday made the start for Eastern. In her last start against Edwardsville, Maday went nine innings while giving up four runs (two earned) in a losing effort. Amanda Lambrecht, who beat Maday in their previous contest by pitching a nine inning complete game shutout, would be on the mound once again for the Cougars.

The first inning proved to be the Panthers downfall in the game as they allowed Edwardsville to score four quick runs, which they would not be able to recover from.

Edwardsville’s Lindsey Barron started the bottom half of the first inning with a single. Barron was then able to advance to second on a bunt single by Cougar outfielder Jill Rackers. Maday then walked Chelsea Yankolovich to load the bases up. At this point, Maday was able to get a ground ball that resulted in a force out at home. She followed this up by getting another Cougar player out with an infield fly. 

This is where things would get interesting as the Panthers had a chance to get out of the inning unscathed. Maday battled Cougar outfielder Brittany Toney, but ended up allowing an RBI single. The next batter reached on an error by catcher Abby Wood that allowed another run to score and extended the inning. Two more runs would end up scoring, putting the Panthers in a 4-0 hole after just one inning.

Down 5-0 heading into the fourth inning, the Panthers made one last attempt to gain some traction in the game. After an Abby Wood walk and an Ally Seplak single, sophomore first baseman Reynae Hutchinson blasted her third homerun of the season to make it a 5-3 game.

Unfortunately for the Panthers, they would only be able to score one more run in the contest and ended up losing by a final score of 9-4.

After having one of her best career performances in the previous game against Butler, Stephanie Maday will likely want to forget about her game against the Cougars. She pitched 5.2 innings in the game and allowed nine runs (six earned) on 13 hits.

Junior second baseman Carly Willert was 2-for-4 in the game with an RBI. Hutchinson was 1-for-2 with a homerun and three RBIs.

After the split against Butler on Tuesday, Eastern head coach Kim Schuette was very precise about what the teams thought process would be for the rest of the week.

“We will bounce back tomorrow and keep going,” Schuette said.

It looks like that’s what that Panthers will have to continue to do, as they won’t have much of a break before they get back on the field.

Eastern now has an overall record of 13-14, while their conference record dropped to 3-5. Their next games will be this Saturday, as they take on Murray State in a conference doubleheader at Williams Field, with action kicking off at 1 p.m. They will then play the series finale Sunday at 12 p.m.

Erik Jensen can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected].