Courtesy of Yale Athletics

In its third weekend of Ivy League competition, the Yale softball team (6–16, 4–5 Ivy) dropped a series to Brown (11–15, 3–6) at home after splitting a Saturday double header. The Elis currently rank sixth in the Ancient Eight, while Brown sits at seventh place.

Yale had hoped to gain a win against Brown after its mid-week loss to Fairfield University. 

“Coming off of the Wednesday game, the team really needed to prove to ourselves that on any given day, we can beat any team,” catcher Sam Goodcase ’24 said. “It was awesome to start the series off with a win, and a great hitting game for us.”

In the first game against Brown, the Bulldogs started off the scoring early. In the first inning, Goodcase hit a double down the left field line allowing for Maddie Latta ’25, who pitched 5.2 innings, to score. Goodcase also managed to make it home in the first inning making it 2–0 until Brown scored in the fourth inning. Yale immediately responded in the bottom of the inning as Willa Ferrer ’24 scored on a Latta single. 

After each side scored a run in the sixth, the game was knotted at four. The game eventually went into an eighth inning, but did not last much longer as Goodcase blasted the first pitch she saw over the left-field fence to secure Yale’s 4–3 victory. Goodcase leads Yale with a .414 batting average.

“I want to give kudos to our pitching staff for keeping us in that game, giving us the chance to win,” Goodcase said. “If it wasn’t me who scored that final run, it was going to be somebody, it just happened to be me that day! It was great to be able to contribute to that win in late innings.” 

Latta pitched three strikeouts in the 5.2 innings she pitched in the opening game against Brown. Nicole Conway ’23 relieved Latta and pitched a scoreless 2.1 innings. 

The Bulldogs had to make a quick transition to the second game of the doubleheader, with the first pitch taking place just thirty minutes after Goodcase’s walkoff. 

Yale’s Miranda Papes ’22 pitched the first five innings of game two. Conway closed out the game by pitching in the final two innings of the day, striking out three Brown players.

Carolyn Skotz ’24 hit her first career home run in the first inning to give the Bulldogs a 1–0 lead for the majority of the game. The Elis were unable to recover from a three-run performance by the Bears in the sixth after tying the score in the fifth. Goodcase was able to bat home Skotz to tighten Brown’s lead to 4–2, but Yale couldn’t complete the comeback. 

Brown’s Alexis Guevara took the pitching circle in game two and registered 11 strikeouts, a career-high. She also earned Ivy League Softball Rookie of the Week for her performance against Yale.

“The series against Brown did not go as expected,” said Conway. “We did not play the way we are capable of.”

With the series tied at one, Sunday’s rainy day matchup proved to be a high scoring game, with a final score of 15–5 favoring Brown.

Yale scored all five runs in the first inning. Latta was two-for-three during the Sunday game including a double that allowed for Carmen Muscolina ’24 to score the second run of the game.

“Being a versatile player is something I take great pride in and work extra hard to accomplish,” Latta said. Latta has the best ERA for Yale at 4.67 and the second best batting average at .306.

It was not until the third inning that Brown scored. Brown had scored three runs at the top of the third before rain forced a 90-minute delay. When players returned to the field to finish out the game, Brown managed to tie the score 5–5 at the end of the third inning.

After tying up the score, the Bears were unstoppable. Yale held Brown to only one run in the fourth inning, but Brown hammered another four runs in the fifth inning with an additional five runs in the sixth. 

In the six-inning game, four different pitchers entered the circle to throw for Yale: Conway, Latta, Papes and Hannah Turner ’25. Conway registered four strikeouts. 

“We are having a very focused week this week,” Conway said about preparation for next weekend. “We can spend the whole week preparing for Columbia, which gives our bodies a chance to rest and mentally we can take a step back and focus on the little things in practice that will result in better game play.”

The mid-week game scheduled for Wednesday, April 6 against Quinnipiac was preemptively canceled due to rain in the forecast.

The Bulldogs look to rebound in Ivy League play after a couple of hard losses this past weekend as Yale heads to Columbia on Saturday, April 9 and Sunday, April 10 for a three game series.