AMHERST — It took almost 30 minutes for the final members of the UMass softball team to filter off their home field.
The final quartet of seniors lingered in right field for almost 15 minutes after everyone else had vacated the area. Their red-faced teammates came out of the dugout sporadically into the warm embraces of friends and families hoping to ease their disappointment. Finally Kaycee Carbone, Melissa Garcia, Erin Stacevicz and Kaitlyn Stavinoha left the field, their jerseys unbuttoned but still firmly on their shoulders, together as a group one last time.
The tears the Minutewomen shed Friday came a day too early and in entirely the wrong circumstances for the team. The mission had always been to leave Sortino Field on Saturday with tears of ecstasy coating their cheeks, not the droplets of disappointment that instead flowed. No matter what was said, the pain wasn’t going to be washed away by the rain that drizzled on the scene.
Despite the efforts of the seniors at the core of its lineup, UMass couldn’t string together the offense it needed to keep its season alive for one more day. Top-seeded Fordham scored runs in three of the first four innings to advance past the Minutewomen 8-2 in the Atlantic 10 Tournament, setting up a rematch with Saint Joseph’s on Saturday in another elimination game.
“We just had a really hard time stringing things together after batter four,” UMass coach Kristi Stefanoni said. “I did think we were aggressive, we just couldn’t put it together when we needed to.”
UMass (26-22) had two great chances to replicate the offensive rally that propelled it past Saint Louis on Thursday, but both times, it fell apart after Carbone’s turn in the lineup. Already trailing 4-0, the senior trio of Stacevicz, Stavinoha and Carbone all singled to lead off the fourth inning and manufacture the Minutewomen’s first run. Yet the next three hitters in the order all failed to get the ball out of the infield, stranding the two runners on base.
The same trio came through in the top of the sixth as well. This time Carbone hit a long fly ball to left field for an RBI sacrifice fly. An error by the shortstop gave UMass a brief glimmer of hope in the frame, but again no offense followed the seniors.
Stacevicz, Stavinoha and Carbone smacked all six hits UMass had in the first six innings as their teammates were baffled by Atlantic 10 Pitcher of the Year Madie Aughinbaugh. The Fordham hurler kept the other six batters in the UMass order off balanced with her off-speed pitches and ability to paint the corners of the strike zone. The curveball was especially effective against the two right-handed hitters in the UMass lineup, who had half of the team’s six strikeouts in the game.
“Her curveball was really tough for our righties to hit,” Stefanoni said. “It was just really difficult for us to put a good swing on that curveball, and that’s probably a reason why our rally came up a little bit short.”
Fordham was playing with the lead early after quickly timing and battering Kiara Oliver. The sophomore watched as her first pitch of the game was sent right back up the middle for a single and then she plunked the second batter. She walked the third batter before Aughinbaugh helped her own cause with a two-run single that nearly bent second baseman Hannah Bunker’s glove in half.
That was the end of the day for Oliver, who was replaced by Quinn Breidenbach in the circle. The junior escaped the first without more damage, but surrendered three straight two-out singles that allowed the Rams to double the lead in the second. Fordham then effectively iced the game with three runs in the fourth after UMass put its first run on the board.
“They compete,” Stefanoni said. “You can say whatever you want about them, but they turn it on and they compete. At the end of the day, that is what they had over us.”
There was no lack of effort in the Minutewomen’s performance, especially after senior Riley Gregoire and Bunker hit back-to-back singles in the seventh inning to spark a potential rally. But it was too late for UMass in a season that fell short of the expectations everyone had set for the program. It was the earliest exit from the conference tournament for the Minutewomen since missing the event in 2015, but the result was simply a symptom of an inconsistent team.
It will be a long offseason for Stefanoni and her staff as they try to figure out how to rebuild and reload after this season. Five of the six players who hit .300 or better this season were seniors — Bunker at .359 is the lone exception — and only two returning players who had enough at-bats to qualify in rankings batted better than .250.
Although the younger players might have gained valuable experience in the process, Stefanoni said she understands that this season was unacceptable within the standards of the program. And with fire in her stomach far different than what was there the past two seasons when UMass fell to Fordham in the championship game, the sixth-year coach charges into year seven with pages of plans to restore the Minutewomen to their former glory.
“We need to be better, we need to get better,” Stefanoni said. “My staff and I have all summer to figure it out and we’ll be starting (Saturday), we’re not going to be taking a break. We will find a way to be better and get this team to be better throughout the year so that this doesn’t happen anymore.”