CHARLESTON - The Buccaneers concluded their season opening weekend on Sunday afternoon with the squad claiming their first victory of the season over Marist to cap off the tournament. They defeated the Red Foxes by a 5-4 final score in extra innings and fell earlier in the day to Siena.
GAME ONE
Both teams scored a run in the first inning and traded another in the second and third innings, pulling the score to two apiece. Siena went on to score two in the top of the fourth and sixth, pushing their lead to 6-2 to claim the victory in the Saints' final matchup of the weekend.
Kinsey Clopton started in the circle for the Bucs, throwing five innings with five strikeouts. She allowed three earned runs as well. Brenna Conley came in to throw the final two innings, allowing one earned run with two strikeouts.
Blakely Kingsmore and Jordyn Dimond both had a successful stolen base attempts to go with two hits apiece.. The Bucs had seven hits on the day with each being a single. Carsten Sandvig recorded each of the RBIs with Kingsmore being the scoring run each time.
GAME TWO
Marist jumped out to an early lead by scoring three runs in the opening frame of the ballgame. Camryn Martin had an RBI fielder's choice to score Kingsmore and get the Bucs on the board in the first. In the second, Emma Villaescusa had a sacrifice fly to score Linley Jones and cut their deficit to jump 3-2. The Red Foxes bumped go an insurance run in the fifth off a solo home run.
Charleston Southern's Dimond doubled in the fifth inning to score Kingsmore to cut the lead back to just one run. In the seventh, Emma Smith had a triple to score Kingsmore yet again, tying the game and sending it to extra innings.
In the eighth, the Bucs got out of the top of the inning without allowing anyone to score. In their half of the inning, Addison Waring scored on an fielding error by Marist that allowed her to go from second to home and clinch the team's first win of 2026.
Riley Lauffer had the start and threw all eight innings for the Bucs with eight strikeouts, only allowing four runs off four hits and four walks.
Blakley Kingsmore led the offense, going 3-4 at the plate with three singles and two stolen bases. Dimond, Smith and Sydney Spayd each had one as well to round out the team's six of the day.
UP NEXT
Charleston Southern will return to action this weekend for the Cici's Pizza Lowcountry Classic from Friday, February 13 through Sunday, February 15. All five games that the Bucs will take part in will be streamed on ESPN+ with the teams they will be taking on including Sacred Heart (2/13 @ 3 p.m.), UConn (2/13 @ 5:30 p.m.), UMass (2/14 @ 3 p.m.), Penn (2/14 @ 5:30 p.m.) and Akron (2/15 @ noon).
