Alverno College Athletics - Home of the Inferno

MILWAUKEE -- The bracket for the 2010 Northern Athletics Conference softball tournament has been set in preparation for the league's top six teams to battle it out for the conference crown and an automatic bid to the upcoming NCAA Division III Tournament in the three day, double-elimination tournament May 6-8 hosted by Alverno College at Alverno Field in Milwaukee.

The first pitch of tournament play on Thursday is slated for 3 p.m. between fourth-seeded Lakeland College and No. 5 Concordia University Wisconsin followed by a 5 p.m. match-up of No. 3 Dominican University and No. 6 Marian University. Tournament play will continue throughout the day on Friday and Saturday with a scheduled 9 a.m. start time on both days, culminating in the tournament championship game on Saturday afternoon.

MILWAUKEE -- The Alverno College softball team closed out its 2010 season with a pair of Northern Athletics Conference losses to Marian University with scores of 11-3 and 13-9 at Alverno Field.

Although the score of game one ended with a lopsided 11-3 result, the Inferno (13-27, 7-17 NAC) took the game into extra innings for the second time this weekend after dropping a 15-inning bout with Edgewood College yesterday.

After throwing an arm-numbing total of 19.2 innings in yesterday's doubleheader, Inferno senior pitcher Jessica Goetz (Milwaukee, Wis./Greendale Martin Luther) recovered enough to throw through nine fairly clean innings of the first game with Marian, scattering 11 hits to help force the game into the 10th inning. At that point, the Sabres finally wore Goetz down and struck for eight runs on six hits, taking full advantage of the Inferno's lone fielding error of the game to rack up five of those runs unearned.

MILWAUKEE -- Jessica Goetz was determined not to go down without a fight on Senior Day.  The Alverno College softball team's lone senior battled through over 19 innings in the circle in both games of the squad's doubleheader with Edgewood College, even dealing some of her best stuff to help to force a 15-inning marathon in the first game, but it wasn't quite enough to lift the Inferno to victory as the home squad dropped both games with scores of 6-4 and 8-3 at Alverno Field.

The first game set a league record for the longest game in history between two NAC teams. Benedictine University holds the record for the longest game played by a single conference team, going 16 innings in a non-conference match with Wheaton College back on April 23, 2007.

HOWARDS GROVE, Wis. -- Alverno College defeated host Lakeland College 3-1 in game one of a doubleheader for their seventh conference win this season, the most in the nine-year history of the program.

"That was just a great conference win and it was just a bonus to break that record," Alverno head coach Kristin Kosobucki said. "It's a great step in building the Alverno softball program. It really shows how much the team has improved throughout the year and how we'll continue to develop. Hopefully we'll be able to add to the total and get some more (wins) this weekend."

The previous single-season record for conference wins of six was set in 2007 and tied in 2008. Alverno has four games remaining in its conference schedule to try and add to this season's current total.