It’s been a melancholy month of March for Notre Dame softball. Since the calendar turned to the first full month of the regular season, the Irish are 3-10 overall with a 2-7 mark in ACC games.
This past weekend, they were swept in their first home series of the Kris Ganeff era, losing three games to No. 17 Stanford. Notre Dame now sits at 13-19 (2-7 ACC), a far cry from the 32-game records of the teams that made 24 straight NCAA Tournaments between 1999 and 2023. Stanford, meanwhile, is sitting pretty at 23-3 overall and 8-1 within the conference as it rolls into a challenging part of the schedule against Kentucky, Virginia Tech, Saint Mary's and Clemson on an 11-game win streak.
Friday: Stanford 10, Notre Dame 0
The series opener was practically over before it could begin. The Cardinal hung six runs on junior starting pitcher Micaela Kastor before making an out, finishing the first inning with an 8-0 lead.
Stanford’s eight-run frame started unconventionally with a hit by pitch, a wild pitch, an 11-pitch walk, a bunt single and a bases-loaded walk. After Jade Berry and Kyra Chan each singled home two runs, senior Shannon Becker entered the game in the circle. She managed to get three outs but didn’t fare much better, conceding three additional runs – two of them on an Emily Jones single.
Chan, who joined Caelan Koch in individually recording three hits, pushed Stanford to 10 runs with the final two of her four runs batted in. Her second-inning home run off the scoreboard in left-center field made it 9-0 before her single in the fourth moved the Cardinal into a double-digit advantage. Stanford starting pitcher Kylie Chung made sure it held up, earning her ninth win of the season by striking out three in a five-inning complete game cut short by the run rule.
Saturday: Stanford 6, Notre Dame 2
Though Stanford put each of the game’s first four hitters and scored in the first inning on a Jones double, Notre Dame hung around a bit longer in game two. Both starting pitchers – b for Stanford and freshman Brianne Weiss for Notre Dame – worked around baserunning traffic in the second and third innings, getting the game to the fourth inning with the Cardinal up 1-0.
Things got away from the Irish in fourth inning, as five unearned Stanford runs crossed the plate. With two outs, Weiss walked the bases loaded before inducing a grounder to first that should’ve ended the inning. However, sophomore utility player Sydny Poeck made a critical error that brought home two runs. More importantly, she extended the inning to .425 hitter River Mahler, who sent a backbreaker of a three-run home run over the left-center wall to make it 6-0.
Sophomore Kami Kamzik silenced Stanford’s offense across the final three innings, allowing the Irish offense to break an 11-inning scoring drought. Senior infielder Anna Holloway got Notre Dame going in the fifth with an RBI double to the corner in right, and senior outfielder Emily Tran followed with a single that made it 6-2. The buck stopped, however, with Chung, as the Stanford ace shut out the Irish across the game’s final two innings.
Sunday: Stanford 13, Notre Dame 7
Notre Dame finally grabbed its first lead of the weekend to start Sunday’s action, scoring three runs in the first two innings against Chung. Sophomore infielder Addison Amaral and senior utility player Jane Kronenberger went double-single to drive in first-inning runs that made it 2-0. Although Stanford tied the game on a Joie Economides home run off Kamzik in the second, freshman catcher Rebecca Eckart restored the Irish lead with her first collegiate long ball.
The 3-2 lead disappeared rapidly as Stanford got to Kamzik for five runs in the third inning, then Kastor for six more on seven hits and five walks across the game’s final four frames. Allie Clements and Economides each went deep for Stanford in the third, Clements giving the Cardinal their first lead on a two-run shot and Economides expanding it with her three-run blast. Another softball flew over the fence in the fourth on Berry’s three-run home run, making it a 10-3 lead for Stanford. The Cardinal would eventually go ahead 12-3 after the top of the sixth, putting the Irish within three outs of another run-rule loss.
Notre Dame kept fighting, though, plating four runs in the sixth. Amaral led off with a home run, and Poeck later doubled in two to keep the Irish alive and down 12-7 entering the seventh. However, they still had a long way to go and went down quietly to end the game after giving up one more Stanford run in the top of the final inning.
Five different Stanford hitters finished Sunday’s game with multiple hits, and four of them drove in multiple runs. Amaral and Poeck were Notre Dame’s main bright spots, combining to go 5-for-7 with four RBIs and three runs scored.
UIC on deck
Before returning to conference play with a home series against Virginia next weekend, the Irish will host the University of Illinois Chicago for a midweek contest at 5 p.m. on Tuesday. Notre Dame shut out the Flames 1-0 last year on a 10-strikeout complete game pitched by Kastor.
UIC enters this week’s game at 4-26 overall and 0-6 within Missouri Valley Conference play. The Flames have lost 22 consecutive games, including three to Northern Iowa over the weekend at home, culminating in a 16-4 beatdown on Saturday.
Redshirt senior outfielder Dee Dee Caskey leads a UIC offense that has homered only four times. Caskey has one of them to go with 10 RBIs, 11 doubles, 20 runs scored and a .325/.419/.575 slash line. Freshman infielder Sequoia Sanchez paces the team with 12 RBIs on the year.
UIC hasn’t fared much better in the circle given its 6.86 team earned run average. Redshirt senior Alyssa McIntosh and freshman Jasmine Whorley have made 25 of the team’s 29 starts, the two combining for more than 150 innings with 73 walks, 69 strikeouts and an ERA near 6.00.
