RIPON, Wis. - Facing one of the top teams in the Great Lakes region Saturday afternoon, the Ripon College softball team recorded one of their most impressive victories of the season. The Red Hawks split a pair of games with Cornell College, which entered the day ranked seventh in the region and tied for first in the Midwest Conference, winning the first game by a score of 6-4, before losing the second 9-1 in six innings.

After a scoreless first inning, Ripon (13-23, 8-10 MWC) broke into the scoring column first in the opening game, scoring four runs on four hits in the bottom of the second inning. Maddie Koster drove in the first run with a single, followed by a pair of bases loaded walks, and an RBI double by Ashley Parkkonen.

Cornell (26-8, 14-4 MWC) cut that lead in half in the third on an RBI single and a run-scoring double, but Ripon got one of those runs back in the third on another RBI single off the bat of Koster. Cornell scored one more run in the fifth, but Ripon answered with an RBI double by Isabella Osborn in the sixth. Cornell added another run in the seventh to cut the lead to two, but that was as close as they could get.

Ripon finished with nine hits, including three from Osborn and two apiece from Koster and Parkkonen. Lexi Reetz (10-11) continued to be her dominant self, allowing two earned runs on six hits and striking out seven in her 20th complete game of the season. That gives her 142 strikeouts on the season, which makes her just the second player in school history with 140 or more strikeouts and leaves her 16 shy of the single season school record. Reetz's 10 victories this season are tied for ninth in school history for a single season.

Ripon picked up where they left off in game two, scoring the game's first run in the opening inning on a fielder's choice that allowed Stephanie Cartwright to score. That would be all the runs the Red Hawks could muster however, as Cornell tied things up in the second, before taking control of the game with four runs in the third. The Rams scored twice more in the fourth, before ending the game with another two runs in the sixth.

The Red Hawks finished with six hits. Cartwright and Jessica Kobelt led the way with two hits apiece.

Ripon's 2017 campaign ends with 13 wins, which is nine more than last season, while their eight conference victories were twice as many as the team finished with a year ago. This year's Red Hawks finished with 37 doubles, which is tied for sixth in program history, while also recording the second-best fielding percentage the history of the program (.954).