HOUSTON – The University of St. Thomas softball team ended the 2022 regular season on a winning note Sunday as the Celts defeated Centenary (La.) 7-1.
Senior pitcher Lindsey Longuet limited the visiting Ladies to three hits in the game. She struck out three batters over six shutout innings to earn the win and improve her record to 15-5 this season.
Fellow senior Marissa Vasquez finished the game by tossing the last inning for the Celts (22-13, 14-7 SCAC), who will enter the postseason Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference tournament as the No. 2 seed. Vasquez leads the SCAC with three saves.
Though honoring the Celt seniors was the theme of the day, sophomore Mallarie Munson claimed some of the spotlight as she hit a rare, inside-the-park grand slam to highlight a six-run UST third inning. Munson hit a fly ball to deep right field that was just out of reach of Centenary's Mackenzie Cox and allowed Ariana Brown, Delayne Moreno, and Jaelyn Simmons to also score.
Munson added a sacrifice fly in the fourth inning to give her five RBIs for the game.
Taylor Le, a Houston native who learned to play the game at the West University Softball Association fields the Celts now call home, recorded a sacrifice fly in the fourth inning and hit a double in the fifth inning in her last home game as Celt. Brown, who will also graduate this year before exhausting her athletic eligibility, had two hits for the Celts.
UST catcher Sydneye Cromwell scored a run Sunday. Though hitless in her final home game, she went 5-for-8 in her two previous games, which also included a home run and four RBIs in UST's 5-1 win at Trinity last week.
Longuet finished the home portion of her career by retiring the last eight batters she faced, which included getting out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam unscathed in the fourth inning.
Simmons accounted for UST's first run of the game with an RBI single in the third that scored Kayleigh Deakle. Moreno went 2-for-3 and scored twice in the game.
The Celts return to action this weekend when they head to Irving, Texas, for the SCAC Tournament, hosted by UDallas. Their opponent and the starting time for their first game have yet to be determined but will be announced on USTCelts.com and the UST Athletics social media pages.
