Gaston College records its 20th victory of the season

After knocking off Southeastern Illinois College to finish a split of four games in the Fastpitch Dreams Classic in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Gaston College couldn't have been happier.

"Honestly, that's our biggest win of the year," Rhinos coach Mike Steuerwald said after his team beat Southeastern Illinois 5-1 on Wednesday evening. "Their pitcher is D1 kid and she's throwing 65 to 67 mph. So she was definitely the hardest thrower we've seen all year.
"But we put in a game plan and executed it extremely well."

Gaston College, which lost 7-4 to Delta College, Mich., earlier on Wednesday, bounced back to beat Southeastern Illinois by snapping a 1-all tie after four innings to score once in the fifth and three times in the sixth before reliever Brantleigh Parrott closed out a scoreless 4-inning, 9-strikeout effort for the victory.

The win gives the Rhinos a 20-6 overall record just before Thursday's noon doubleheader at Fayetteville Tech will mark the halfway point of their 58-game regular season.

"It's huge," said Steuerwald, whose team went 4-16 as a club team a year ago in its debut season. "Anytime you can get 20 wins in the first half of a season is big. It says a lot about how this group has responded to the challenges."

In the victory, Haylee Salter drove in two runs with a second-inning RBI single and a sixth-inning RBI triple off Falcons' pitcher Whitley Hunter, who committed to NCAA Division I Southern Indiana last fall.

For the day, Salter, Parrott, Gabrielle Porterfield and Asheton Queen had two hits apiece, with Porterfield driving in two runs and Queen one.

Gaston College used three pitchers in the opener as Delta scored six times in the third and led 7-0 before the Rhinos' had 4-run fifth.

In the nightcap, Amiya Tomlinson started and went three innings before Parrott relieved and finished up in the final four innings to improve her seasonal record to 9-0 with four saves.