By Mike Rudin – Sports Editor The 2015 season opened 0-2 for Hofstra softball on day one with back-to-back loses to University of Central Arkansas 3-2 and Louisiana State University in a 3-0 shutout.
GAME ONE
The first game of the season started out fighting an up-hill battle with Central Arkansas with a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning. Opening day starter Morgan Lashley struggled with four consecutive walks that drove in the Arkansas run.
Lashley worked out of the bases-loaded jam with a fielder’s choice to end the inning. She bounced back for a while in the second and third inning with back-to-back scoreless innings to keep the Pride within one run until the tides turned in the top of the fourth.
Hofstra scored both runs in the fourth inning thanks to RBI single by designated hitter Brittany Allocca. She managed to squeeze out enough time to reach the bag for the infield hit and allowed Caryn Bailey to come home. Then, second basemen Lacey Clark reached home plate after a throwing error by the Arkansas Bears.
Hofstra held their 2-1 lead momentarily until the bottom of the fourth when Bears hitter, Ashley Boswell, unloaded a bomb against Lashley that tied the game 2-2.
After a scoreless fifth inning from both sides and in the top of the sixth, Central Arkansas took the lead with a RBI single in center field from Sam Forrest.
Morgan Lashley was pulled out the sixth inning with one out to go and Jessica Peslak took her spot on the mound.
Lashley pitched 5.2 innings and gave up three earned-runs, six walks while she struck out seven batters. Hofstra’s offense went 6-for-27 and walked twice as a unit – not one Pride batter had multiple hits in the game.
Central Arkansas was 4-for-21 at the plate but pulled off six walks in the game. Both teams struck-out seven times each in the first game of the doubleheader.
GAME TWO
A couple of hours later, the next matchup became a pitchers’ duel at first between Hofstra’s Taylor Pirone and Allie Walljasper in the first two innings until Walljasper stole the show.
Walljasper threw a complete-game shutout for the win against the Pride and she improved her record to 2-0 on the season – she gave up three hits total. She struck-out five Pride players in her seven innings of work and did not surrender a walk all game long.
On the other side, Pirone lost her edge in the bottom of the third and fourth inning against LSU thanks to a two-run rally in the third and one run scored in the fourth.
Tigers’s hitter bailey Landry got the inning going with a walk for the opposition. Followed up with Bianka Bell, as she homered to left to provide the only run-support Walljasper needed in the game. Bell’s two-run shot became the difference in the game that killed the Pride with Landry and Bell trotting home.
The third run that came in the fourth inning became insurance for LSU thanks to a RBI groundout by Constance Quinn that drove in Sandra Simmons.
Afterwards, the LSU Tigers kept the Pride off the board and secured the win to have Hofstra start out the season on a two-game losing streak. Senior starter Taylor Pirone pitched a complete game but let loose four hits, three earned-runs, two walks while she struck-out three in six innings of work.
Overall, day one of the LSU invitational featured the Pride’s top starters -- Pirone and Lashley -- with 0-1 starts in the record books for the 2015 season.