Gaston College clinches share of Region 10 title with Friday DH split

A rally in the nightcap of Friday afternoon's doubleheader at Florence-Darlington Tech gave Gaston College a share of the Region 10 Division I softball title.

The Rhinos (41-7, 12-2) scored all of their runs in the last two innings of a 4-2 win in the nightcap after losing 10-2 in six innings in the opener.

Gaston College needs either another Florence-Darlington (27-12, 10-4) Region 10 loss or one win in the Rhinos' season-ending April 27 doubleheader at USC Sumter to wrap up an outright league title.

"That second game win was huge for us because we could've lost control of our destiny to them," said Gaston College coach Mike Steuerwald, whose team won the Region 10 regular season and tournament titles last season.

After a season-high eight Rhinos fielding errors caused six unearned runs in the opener, Gaston College trailed 2-0 after five innings in the nightcap before scoring three runs in the sixth inning and once in the seventh to take the win.

Gabrielle Porterfield opened the sixth-inning rally with a walk and advanced to second on a wild pitch. After Alayna Patrick's RBI double scored Porterfield, Grace Kealy walked and stole second base before Kendall Bradshaw's RBI groundout drove in Kealy to tie the score at 2.

Emma Ghorley followed with what proved to be a game-winning sacrifice fly to score Kealy following a double-digit pitch at-bat.

"She had an incredible at-bat after falling behind 0-2," Steuerwald said of Ghorley. "I think she fouled off 10 pitches and drew a couple of balls before getting that sacrifice fly."

Starter and winner Abigail Brewton improved to 19-1 with a 98-pitch 3-hitter with four strikeouts in which she yielded two runs in the first inning.

"We were down 2-0 in the first inning and they had the bases loaded before we get out of it," Steuerwald said. "After the third inning, she really settled in and I don't think they had any more runners on base."

Alayna Patrick had RBI doubles in each game to lead Gaston College's offense on Friday.

The Rhinos visits nationally-ranked Surry Community College (Monday at 3 p.m.), Caldwell Tech (Wednesday at 3 p.m.) and USC Sumter (April 27 at 1 p.m.) in three regular-season-ending doubleheaders. Surry is No. 5 in the current NJCAA Division III poll and Caldwell is No. 3.