Van Blaricom’s walk-off homer helps UGF sweep Carroll

Maybe Keeley Van Blaricom was ready to kick off her cleats and watch some March Madness. Perhaps she just didn’t feel like playing extra innings.

Whatever the motivation, Van Blaricom’s two-out, two-strike, solo home run broke a 2-2 tie in the bottom of the seventh inning to lead the University of Great Falls’ softball team to a Palm Sunday sweep of rival Carroll College in the Argos’ home opener at the Great Falls Multi-Sports Complex.

UGF (18-10) won the first game of the doubleheader, 7-4, thanks to homers from Van Blaricom, Alex Lowry and Kirstie Thomas. Sunday’s sweep followed up a Saturday split between the two Frontier Conference schools. Only the first of Sunday’s two contests counted toward the teams’ conference records.

Shortly after her second-game heroics, Van Blaricom said she was just trying to keep the inning alive when Saints pitcher MacKenna Landis grooved one.

“I just wanted to put the bat on the ball. I just wanted to get on base any way I can,” the Argo left fielder said.

Van Blaricom had just three hits on the day, but they all brought runs home.

“Normally she’s line drive, line drive, line drive, but today with the wind, I was pretty happy with her fly balls,” Argos coach Joey Egan said.

The home run came just a half-inning after Carroll designated player Katie Zink (a Billings West graduate) smashed a solo shot of her own to tie the game at two.

Egan said she was confident the Argos could win it in the seventh despite Zink’s clutch smash.

“It was pretty nice coming into that last inning with our 2-3-4 hitters being our best hitters,” Egan said. “… We’ve got a strong middle of the lineup.”

That was the same middle of the order, though, that hadn’t come through earlier in the game. The Argos had runners in scoring position with nobody out in the second, third and fourth frames and failed to score all three times.

They finally broke through in the fifth when Lowry and Van Blaricom delivered back-to-back RBI hits.

“We just needed to make adjustments quicker rather than waiting later, but we managed to pull it off,” Van Blaricom, a junior, said. “It just sucks leaving people because those are runs we left unscored.”

The Argos didn’t leave many runs unscored in the day’s first game. Four of UGF’s nine hits went for extra bases as they cruised to victory.

Zink and Jaylin Kenney each homered for the Saints (7-20), but Van Blaricom fanned seven Carroll batters to earn the win.

Carroll got a pair of hits from C.M. Russell alumna Kaydee Parsons in the second contest.

Thomas scattered six hits in the circle for the Argos on her way to the win.