The Shippensburg University softball team took three of four games of a traveling weekend.

The Raiders swept Millersville University on Saturday and split a series with Wilmington University on Sunday. Pitcher Taryn Wilson threw in the first three games of the weekend and picked up the wins in all three. She also had 17 strikeouts over the three games while only giving up six total runs.

With those three wins, Wilson moved into double digits in wins for the season and she is the first SU pitcher to reach that mark since current pitching coach Emily Goshorn finished the 2014 season with a record of 25–4.

SU took the first game by a narrow score of 4–3 after starting the game behind after the second inning. The game went into a rain delay after three innings and the Raiders gained momentum after the restart, scoring four runs in the fourth to take the lead for good.

Wilson shut out the Marauders for the rest of the game and completed the game only giving up three runs on six hits. Maddie Mulhall was the player who brought in what turned out to be the winning runs for the Raiders with a two-run double in the fourth.

Game 2 on Saturday was a different story. The Marauders could not get anything going all game no matter who was at the plate. Wilson showed no signs of fatigue in her second game of the day and was more impressive than in the earlier game. Wilson was two hits shy from a perfect game after not conceding a walk all game.

The offense for the Raiders, however, was not shut down. The team scored four runs in the third inning, including a two-run double by Meghan Klee.

Chloe Collins and Kendall Geis were also standouts on offense. Collins racked up two hits to go with an RBI and a stolen base on the day, while Geis had three hits with one RBI and two runs scored.

Sunday began the same way Saturday ended – with the Raiders earning another win thanks to a dominant performance from Wilson. She pitched her third game in a row over a two-day span, but still performed like it was her first game of the weekend.

While Game 1 on Sunday was not a shutout like the previous game, Wilson was clean until the fifth inning when she conceded two runs and then gave up one more in the sixth. Wilmington, however, was unable to capitalize on this sudden burst of offense and fell one run short in the end.

Wilson gave up three runs on seven hits and struck out five over seven innings of work. Three complete games in a row and Wilson was still pitching strong to give her team a chance to pull out the win.

Two errors helped SU gain two runs in the second to put the team up 3–0 early and the players did not look back from there. Collins drove in one of SU’s runs and Tara Bicko went 2-for-3 in the first game with a run scored.

The second game of the day did not go nearly as well for the Raiders. Wilmington sent out one of its top pitchers in Caitlyn Whiteside who earned her 11th shutout of the season in a complete-game effort. SU sent Nicole Smith to the mound, but she was unable to stop Wilmington in her nearly two innings of work.

The Wildcats started scoring early and earned the majority of their runs in the second inning, scoring five off of Smith. Julie Tosti and Collins came in as relief and limited Wilmington to only one run for the rest of the game, but the offense was completely at a loss against Whiteside. Just as Wilson had confounded batters in previous games, Whiteside was dominating, only it was SU that was on the receiving end of the dominant performance this time.

The weekend performance boosted SU’s record to 25–18 for the season. The Raiders are now comfortably sitting in third place in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) East with a four-game lead over East Stroudsburg University.

With only four games left in the season, SU is closing in on a PSAC Tournament berth. The team will have to face East Stroudsburg away from home on Friday and then come back home to take on second-place West Chester University on Saturday to close out the 2017 regular season. These final two matchups will be crucial in deciding whether or not the Raiders will make it into the tournament.

Wilson’s weekend performance was noted by the PSAC league office, as she was named PSAC East Softball Pitcher of the Week on Monday. Wilson sits in eighth in the PSAC for both total strikeouts and batting average against (BAA). She has already surpassed her strikeout total for last season, as she currently sits with 90 strikeouts as opposed to the 77 she had at the end of last season.

Wilson earned a 2.00 ERA over the three games she pitched during the weekend. As a result, her total ERA for the season was lowered to 2.67 with only four games to go. Her total ERA last season was 2.57, so she sits just over that average right n

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