Fifty-one games into the history of the program, the Georgetown softball team finally has a home. The Hoyas (6-20), in their second year as a program, lost both games of their home-opener doubleheader against James Madison on Wednesday at Guy Mason Field.
University President John J. DeGioia was in attendance and threw out the ceremonial first pitch.
“It’s so exciting,” Head Coach Pat Conlan said about her team finally having a home field. “We’ve done a lot of work with the field over the past year. It was in great playing shape yesterday, and having President DeGoia there was just a thrill. All in all it was a great way to christen the new field.”
Georgetown dropped the first game 7-1 as James Madison managed seven runs on nine hits in seven innings. Georgetown pitcher, freshman Jennifer Connell, held the Dukes hitless in the first three innings, but a five-run fourth inning for James Madison doomed the Hoyas.
James Madison scored two more runs in the top of the fifth to extend their lead to 7-0 before Georgetown scored in the bottom half of the inning. With freshman outfielder Olivia Newhouse on third base, Connell helped herself out with an RBI single, but Georgetown was too far behind for it to affect the outcome of the game.
“Quite often we get through the opposition line up one time, and we’re successful, but they seem to catch up to us their second or third time through the order,” Conlan said.
In the second game James Madison shut out Georgetown for an 8-0 victory. James Madison scored early, with two runs in the top of the first inning and four more in the top of the second. The Hoyas managed four hits but spread them out over the course of the game and were unable to put together many scoring opportunities.
Conlan said that her team’s performance at Guy Mason Field was not remotely close to their best.
“I didn’t think we played a bad game, but I didn’t think we played like we were capable of. The weak part of our game yesterday was that we couldn’t score any runs,” she said.
With 31 games left in the season there is plenty of time for improvement.
“We just need to practice as much as we can,” said freshman Samantha Peters, who was named co-independent player of the week for March 12-18. “We are a very inexperienced team, as people have said, with seven freshmen. We just need to be ready for every pitch,” Peters said.
Peters went 2-for-3 with a double and three RBIs in Georgetown’s 20-0 victory over Coppin State on March 16. For the week she went 4-for-9 with three doubles and five RBI and had a perfect fielding percentage.
Georgetown turns its attention to the Hoya Invitational this weekend at Guy Mason Field. The Hoyas will play Canisius at 11 a.m. Saturday followed by Radford at 5 p.m. On Sunday, they will finish up the invitational with a game against Colgate at 12 p.m.