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Garden City, N.Y. -- The Adelphi University softball team sent out its four seniors as victors to cap the regular season on Saturday, sweeping the American International College Yellow Jackets, 3-1 and 6-0 on Janet L. Ficke Field.

Prior to the start of the double-header, the team honored Danielle Cutuli, Lindsay Mapes, Fallon McCarthy and Stephanie Staiano for their contributions to the Brown and Gold over the course of their careers. 

On Senior Day, two juniors accounted for much of the Adelphi (33-13-1, 20-5 NE10) offense, as Nicole Camera and Brenna Martini combined for five RBIs across the two games, while freshman Christina Rizzi drove in two. 

Game 1
Camera's two-run double in the first inning, scoring Nicoletta Cuccio and Martini who had singled and walked before her, put Adelphi up 2-0 in the contest on a day in which it never trailed. The Panthers added a third run in the second thanks to Cuccio wreaking havoc on the bases; after the sophomore singled with two outs, she stole second and advanced to third on the throw with no one covering the base, scoring as the throw went wide of the AIC cutoff man to make it 3-0.

Mapes tossed three-plus innings of two hit softball, giving way to Jessica Vadala in the fourth inning as the sophomore completed the game with a career-high five strikeouts for her 11th win of the season. Vadala stranded an AIC (16-23, 13-12 NE10) runner at third in that inning, before stranding another Yellow Jacket in scoring position in the fifth over the shutout.

Nonetheless, she was forced into a jam in the seventh, as two errors, a walk and a wild pitch led to the first AIC run, with the tying runs on second and third with just one out. However, Vadala and the defense was up to the task, as she forced Keymell Cartwright to ground out before Cuccio made a running grab over her shoulder in right field on a liner by Yami Lopez-Perez to save two runs and the win for Adelphi.

Game 2
After Kristin Fealy worked around a bases-loaded situation, with a total of three hits and a walk in the inning being stymied in part by a double-play, Adelphi quickly found itself in the lead in game two thanks in part to Cuccio and Martini again. The sophomore scored her third run of the afternoon on Martini's one-out triple, as Adelphi's 1-0 lead stood for the first four-and-a-half innings of game two.

The Brown and Gold broke the game open in the fifth with a four-spot, as Stephanie Staiano, Kailah Konkel and Krista King all singled to load the bases before Martini cashed in a pair with a first-pitch single to right to make it 3-0 with two outs. A walk to Camera again loaded the bases, and this time it was Rizzi who went up to the plate first pitch swinging, and stroked a single to center to plate two more and make it 5-0.

Vadala worked around traffic on the bases in the sixth, keeping the shutout in tact, before Elisabeth Berard scored Adelphi's sixth run on a wild pitch after a leadoff walk in the bottom of the inning, and Vadala went back to the circle for a 1-2-3 seventh inning to cap the sweep.

With regular-season play in the Northeast-10 Conference set to concluded on Sunday, April 30, the Panthers hold a two-game lead over Pace for the top seed in the Southwest Division for the NE10 Tournament, which begins on May 2.

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About Adelphi Athletics:
Adelphi University joined the Northeast-10 Conference in the fall of 2009 and in the past seven seasons, has collected 20 regular season conference titles, 24 tournament championships, 29 individual crowns and captured the Northeast-10 Presidents' Cup three times (2013, 2014, and 2016), while winning five NCAA Division II National Championships.

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