THREE-PEAT!!! UB Softball Wins Third Straight ECC Crown

Sparkill, N.Y.-The University of Bridgeport softball team earned its third consecutive East Coast Conference Championship on Sunday afternoon, as back-to-back Tournament Most Outstanding Player, Kaite Burawski (Hartly, Del.) fired a five-hit shutout, her eleventh whitewash of the season, and junior Meg McFarland (Monroe, Conn.) drove in the only two runs of the game with a two-out single in the bottom of the second inning to lift the second-seeded Purple Knights to a 2-0 win over the third-seeded Molloy College Lions.  With the win, Bridgeport will advance to its third straight NCAA Division II National Championship Tournament with a 36-14 overall record.  Molly finishes its 2022 season at 24-33.

Burawski won all three games in the ECC Championship with complete game performances for the Purple Knights to raise her season record to 25-6, as she defeated Molloy on Wednesday and Sunday; plus she topped top-seeded St. Thomas Aquinas on the Spartans home field on Friday morning.

In Sunday's clincher, she struck out seven Lions and walked only one batter to give her a total of 336 strikeouts over 206.1 innings pitched so far in 2022.

McFarland's clutch two-out hit came with the bases loaded in the bottom of the second driving home juniors Missy Daigneault (Rensselear, N.Y.) and Esmee Toet (The Hague, Netherlands).

Junior Taylor Yates (Elk Grove, Calif.) went 3-for-3 at the plate for UB on Sunday to lead an eight-hit attack on offense.

Steph Conrade and Karsyn Eaton each had two hits in a losing effort for Molloy.

The University of Bridgeport will now find out on Monday at 10:00 a.m. who they will face in the 2022 NCAA Division II Championship Tournament and where the team's part of the East Regional will be held when the entire field is announced on www.ncaa.com.