Southeast suffers rare losses to Tennessee State

To say that Southeast Missouri State had dominated the all-time softball series with Tennessee State would not even do the situation justice.

The Redhawks entered this season having won 36 of the 38 meetings between the programs.

But TSU enjoyed rare success against Southeast on Saturday, as the host Tigers swept an Ohio Valley Conference doubleheader, 4-3 and 2-0.

The Tigers set a school record for wins in a season as they improved to 22-11. TSU is 3-4 in OVC play.

Southeast fell to 7-14 overall and 2-3 in the OVC entering today's 1 p.m. series finale in Nashville, Tenn.

The Redhawks led 3-0 after three innings of Saturday's opener, but the Tigers got one run in the fourth and rallied with three runs in the fifth to go ahead for good.

All four of TSU's runs were unearned, thanks to three Southeast errors.

Alex Ramirez had two of Southeast's seven hits. Losing pitcher Elaine Fisher allowed eight hits in six innings. She struck out four and walked one.

In the nightcap, TSU's Amanda Vaught fired a one-hit shutout. She struck out 10 and walked one over seven innings.

Southeast's Jennifer Vasquez got a one-out single that was just fair over the third-base bag in the sixth inning to break up the no-hit bid.

Vaught had earlier picked up a save in the opener with 1 hitless innings, striking out four.

Stacia Dopudja allowed three hits and one run over five innings for the loss.

Track and field

Fielding a limited squad, Southeast track and field athletes came away with four individual titles during Saturday's Rhodes Invitational in Memphis, Tenn.

Chris Williams, the only Southeast runner competing in the meet, won the 200 meters in a time of 21.68 seconds. He placed second in the 100 in 10.76.

John Berry claimed the long jump with a distance of 24 feet, 5 inches, while Bilal Hameed won the triple jump (48-2 1/2).

The Southeast women earned one individual title, by Rebecca Martin in the javelin (141-1). Lindsay Hearne was third in the javelin (127-3) and Ashley Brewer was fourth (121-4). Brewer was third in the discus (140-11).

Richard Martin placed third in the men's javelin (160-11), Bill Nekula was third in the shot put (49-11 3/4) and Andy Glass was fourth in the shot put (48-10 1/4).

--From staff reports