The New England College Softball team set a program record for wins in 2019, wrapping up a 30-8 season following the NECC tournament. The Pilgrims earned the second seed in the conference tournament and played a home playoff game on Thursday, May 2nd in their first NECC tournament.
The Pilgrims were picked third in the conference in the pre-season poll, but recorded a 14-2 record in conference play during the regular season and entered the postseason on a 14 game winning streak. After beating Newbury College and Eastern Nazarene College in the first two rounds of the conference tournament, the Grims tied the program record for consecutive victories. The season finished with a loss in the NECC Championship game against Eastern Nazarene College by a score of 11-2 on May 4th.
After getting off to a bit of a slow start in their first few games in Florida over spring break, the Pilgrims record stood at 2-4 through six games. Following that, they won 28 of the next 30 games including a perfect 9-0 record when playing in Henniker. They had two separate winning streaks that reached double digits this season with the first ending at 12 games and second at 16.
While the team record was extremely impressive, the Pilgrims were led by some outstanding individual seasons. Freshman Daelyn Ross led the team at the plate with 10 home runs, 48 RBI, and is second with a .430 batting average. Ross recorded multiple hits in ten games and had two home runs in a 5-0 win over Becker College on April 19th. Senior Alexa Scribner contributed a .375 batting average and successfully stole 26 bases on 29 attempts. Destiny Helmedach, Chanel Welch, and Jasmin Alvarado have all contributed over 20 RBI this season while hitting near or above .300.
The Pilgrims have been led in the pitching circle by Sophomore Taylor Barbour. Barbour has pitched a team high 126.2 innings and recorded an outstanding 1.49 ERA. She also ranked second in the regular season in the conference in wins (15), strikeouts (148), and also tied for the lead with three saves. She also pitched 12 complete games with five of them being shutouts along with being awarded conference pitcher of the week on multiple occasions. Gabriella Marcheschi and Emily Farone have also contributed with pitching this season by combining for 112.2 innings while winning 11 games and Farone pitched seven complete games and had two shutouts.
NEC finished with their first winning season since 2015, after setting the wins record and hosted a playoff game for the first time since 2013. Next season they will look to get over the hump of winning the conference tournament, where they have come up only one win short of reaching the NCAA tournament for two consecutive seasons.
