The St. John’s softball team split its doubleheader on Saturday at the Battle at the Max, hosted at Max R. Joyner Family Stadium in Greenville, North Carolina. The Red Storm secured a 3-2 walk-off win against Campbell before dropping a close 2-1 contest to East Carolina.
With the victory over Campbell, St. John’s improved to 13-0 in neutral-site games this season, matching No. 1 Tennessee for the longest active neutral-site winning streak in NCAA Division I.
In the first game of the day, pitcher Ana Serafinko led St. John’s with a complete-game performance, striking out 10 batters and allowing five hits. Jess Bianco contributed by reaching base twice, stealing two bases, and scoring both the tying and winning runs. Sarah Post delivered the decisive hit with a walk-off single in the seventh inning.
St. John’s took an early lead after Bianco reached on an error and later scored on Elanna Lysiak’s groundout. After Campbell responded with runs in the fifth and sixth innings to take a 2-1 lead, St. John’s rallied in their final at-bat. Bianco walked and advanced to third before Post’s single drove home two runs for the win.
Serafinko earned her victory by pitching all seven innings with 10 strikeouts and two earned runs allowed.
In their second game against East Carolina, Loreley Francia pitched six innings for St. John’s, giving up four hits and one earned run while striking out six batters. The Red Storm took an early lead when Cassidy Stouffer doubled and Natasha Limbani followed with an RBI single.
Francia kept ECU scoreless through five innings but gave up two runs in the sixth after a leadoff triple led to a sacrifice fly that tied the game; a fielding error later brought home what proved to be the deciding unearned run for ECU.
Despite out-hitting East Carolina 6-4—with contributions from Stouffer, Limbani, Post, and Madison Konopka—St. John’s could not recover late in the game.
Following these results, St. John’s stands at 2-1 during its stay in Greenville so far this weekend and will play Rider next before another matchup against ECU on Sunday morning.
Live statistics will be available via redstormsports.com for both games tomorrow; streaming of their rematch against ECU can be accessed through ecupirates.com.
