The No. 20/19 Virginia Tech softball team ended its final ACC series of the year Sunday with an 8-1 win over Syracuse, the 100th win at Virginia Tech for head coach Pete D’Amour.
In his third season at Blacksburg, D’Amour thus became the fastest coach to reach 100 wins in the program’s history, taking just 127 games to accomplish the feat. The Hokies won 47 games in 2019, 21 in the shortened 2020 season and are up to 32 wins this year after Sunday.
“Sami [Fagan] came up to me after the game with a game ball and I said, ‘What the heck is this for?’ I didn’t have any idea we had won 100 games,” D’Amour said. “I’m thankful for our staff; they make me look good. Also, a coach can’t have success without his players. You can have spurts of success here and there with talented kids, but to have sustained success, you have to have players with good character that buy in to what the staff is teaching.
“We’ve been fortunate to have a core group of players at VT that aren’t only just good players, they’re good kids. Here’s to 100 more.”
The Hokies (32-12, 23-11 ACC) completed their first sweep of the year with the win Sunday against Syracuse (19-20, 11-17 ACC). They were led by Keely Rochard and Kelsey Bennett. Rochard (24-7) got the win in all four games and Bennett led the team offensively with seven RBIs.
“We needed to flush out last weekend and that’s exactly what we did,” Bennett said. “We knew this was our last series weekend and we needed to go out on a strong note to carry over to Liberty on Tuesday and for the postseason.”
THE GAME
Tech had the bats going early Sunday as Bennett singled to the right-center gap in the first inning, which brought Jayme Bailey and Cameron Fagan home for a 2-0 lead. The Hokies got two more runs in the fourth when Darby Trull smacked her first home run of the year. Fagan then homered in the fifth inning to extend the lead to 5-0 after five.
Emma Ritter got on the scoreboard with a double up the middle in the sixth inning, scoring Fagan from second base. After the Orange got a run in the bottom of the sixth, Alexa Milius hit a single down the right-field line and Bennett came across for the 8-1 lead.
Rochard started her fourth straight game Sunday, the heavy duty did not slow her as she threw five innings and surrendered just three hits. Freshman Mackenzie Osborne pitched the sixth inning, and fellow freshman Ivy Rosenberry closed out the win in the seventh inning.
NOTES
- Trull hit her first home run of the season and first home run since April 21, 2019. The junior had seven home runs in 2019 but did not hit one out of the park in the shortened 2020 season.
- Bennett had two more RBIs Sunday and finished out the weekend with a team-leading seven in the series. The sophomore is second on the team in the category with 36, four behind Bailey’s 40.
- Fagan hit her third home run of the season Sunday, finishing off a series in which she hit .429 with six runs scored and three RBIs.
- Mackenzie Lawter tied her career high with three walks in the series finale. The junior scored ahead of Trull’s fourth-inning home run.
- Kelsey Brown stole her 29th base of the season Sunday and has not been thrown out all season.
