TROY, N.Y. – The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) softball team is the top seed and host of the 2017 Liberty League Tournament, which begins on Thursday afternoon at Doris Robison Field and runs through Saturday. The Engineers will face fourth seed Skidmore College, while second seed RIT will open against Clarkson University.
Led by eighth-year head coach
Amber Maisonet, the Engineers are 23-12 overall, including a 9-3 mark in Liberty League play, winning the regular season title for the first time since 2014.
Rensselaer, which is batting .312 as a team, is led offensively by senior captain
Stephanie Caudle (Gainesville, FL/Gainesville), who is batting .400 (40 for 100) with nine doubles, seven home runs, 16 runs scored and 38 runs batted in. Junior Devon Puhl (Frederick, MD/Linganore) is second at .358 (43 for 120) with eight doubles, a triple, 25 runs and 22 RBI. Junior
Chelsea Elliott (Latham, NY/Shaker) rounds out the top three hitters at .346 (18 for 52) with two doubles, two homers, eight runs and 11 RBI.
From the circle, Caudle is 12-4 with a 1.88 earned run average in 23 appearances (16 starts). She has allowed just 66 hits in 100.2 innings, striking out a league-best 112, while walking 25. She holds the opposition to a Liberty League-low .180 batting average. Junior
Sarah Harms (Wilsonville, OR/Wilsonville) is 5-1 with a 3.02 ERA in 48.2 innings. She has struck out 30 and walked 20. Freshman
Jaime Cleasby (Windham, NH/Windham) has gone 6-6 with a 3.25 ERA in 71.0 innings, collecting 48 strikeouts and 13 walks.
The Engineers clinched the top seed in the conference tournament on Sunday, earning a split with Clarkson in Potsdam. RIT (8-4 Liberty League) took second in the conference, while Clarkson (7-5) wound up third. Skidmore qualified as the fourth seed after finishing in a three-way tie for fourth place with Rochester and St. Lawrence, taking the head-to-head tiebreaker in the three-team comparison.
The double-elimination league tournament has two games schedule for Thursday (2pm and 4:30pm), three on Friday (10am, 12:30pm and 3pm) and at least one on Saturday (12pm and as second if necessary).
RPI TV, a student-run club will be broadcasting every game of the tournament through its website, www.wrpi.org.
For more information as well as updated scores, live stats and video, visit the tournament page at www.rpiathletics.com/LLSB17.
