Oberlin softball came to play last Saturday at Denison University. Unfortunately, for the Yeowomen, so did the conference’s top pitcher, Courtney Zollars.
Zollars’ stuff was too much for the Yeowomen to handle as she pitched a perfect game in the first half of a doubleheader last weekend. Not only did Zollars not allow a base runner in her five innings of work, but she also struck out 14 of the 15 batters she faced.

The final score was 9-0 Denison, but the game was not so one-sided the whole time.
“The first four innings were great,” Head Coach Jane Wildman said. Despite the fact that her team had not managed a hit off Zollars, senior pitcher Dawn Sweeney was also pitching well.
Denison scored a run in the first, but after that Sweeney shut them down and did not allow a hit through the fourth, while getting solid support from her defense.
“Our defense in game one was the most positive part of the weekend,” Wildman said.
In the fifth, however, things took a turn for the worse. Denison scored eight runs on five hits, while the Yeowomen made two costly errors in the field. The barrage put Denison up by more than eight runs after five innings, which ended the game on the “mercy rule.”
Zollars seemed to put the team in a funk because they were blanked again in the second game, losing this time 5-0 to Denison’s Erin McClincy. Sweeney took the loss on the mound again, but did have one of only three Yeowomen hits.
“We hit the ball harder,” Wildman said referring to game two of the doubleheader. “We just couldn’t get enough hits to generate any offense.”
First-year Julia Daher said that the team’s offensive woes were due in large part to their slow start. “No one started us off,” she said. “We need that little jump start, and on Saturday we just didn’t get it.”
The sweep by Denison in the season’s final two games sent Oberlin home with an 0-14 conference record and a 3-22 mark overall.

Last Thursday Oberlin played their final home games of the season against non-conference opponent Notre Dame College of Ohio. The Yeowomen lost those games 6-2 and 7-5, respectively.
The opener, in which the team lost 6-2, was much closer than the score would indicate. The game actually went into extra innings tied at one a piece. In the top of the eighth, Notre Dame pulled ahead with a six run inning, and it proved to be too much for the Yeowomen to overcome.
“We just went too many innings without generating any offense,” Wildman said after losing yet another close ballgame.
Oberlin took a 5-4 lead in game two after a three-run fifth inning that saw Sweeney double in two runs for the Yeowomen. Sweeney took the loss on the hill, but went two for four at the plate, scoring two and knocking in three. Junior Amy Golladay went three for four and added two more RBI in the 7-5 loss.
“It was hard to get pumped up for the second game after we were so close in game one,” Golladay said.
The Yeowomen hit the ball well that afternoon, collecting 17 base hits in the doubleheader against Notre Dame, but the problem arose when they were unable to drive those runners in. In addition to their 17 hits, they also left 17 runners stranded on base.

The team was in high spirits about the season, and even though they failed to win a conference game, Wildman said that she thinks the program has grown by “leaps and bounds from last year.”