Agape Freedom Sports LLC

WRITTEN BY: JERIC YURKANIN

Illinois and Binghamton didn’t walk onto Jane B. Moore Field Friday morning like two teams expecting an 11–5 finish. It was 8:57 a.m. in Auburn, Alabama. The air sat at 52 degrees. The sun was bright but still low. That early-game feel was there — quiet dugouts, pitchers setting a tone, hitters taking their first real reads of the day. For two innings, it played like a chess match. Clean outs. Strikeouts. A little tension building underneath the surface, like everyone knew the game was about to speed up… they just didn’t know when.

Illinois struck first, and once it happened, everything changed fast.

The top of the third inning is where the game’s first major turn arrived, and it didn’t come with one dramatic moment — it came with pressure stacked on top of pressure. Ava Moore opened with a single up the middle. Alaina Miller followed with another hit. Skylar Brennan punched a base knock through the left side, and suddenly Binghamton was looking at bases loaded and no outs. That’s the nightmare situation in softball, because once you’re forced into defensive survival mode that early, you start living on thin margins — one ball that finds grass, one throw that sails, one routine play that turns into an extra base.

Ady Kiddy didn’t waste the opportunity. She drove a double into the right-center gap that brought two runs home and lit up Illinois’ dugout. It wasn’t just the runs — it was the message. Illinois wasn’t going to sit around and wait for openings. They were going to create them, force them, and if you gave them an inch, they’d take the entire inning. The inning kept moving. Walks. Contact. Extra outs created by mistakes. The pressure became heavier because the inning refused to end, and by the time Binghamton finally escaped, Illinois had pushed four runs across and seized the early grip of the game.

But the Bearcats didn’t look like a team ready to fold. If anything, they looked like a team that had been punched and immediately decided they were going to swing back.

In the bottom of the third, Em Podeszwa delivered that response with one swing that instantly shifted the emotional temperature. A solo home run to center field — loud, clean, the kind that makes everyone on both sides pause for a second. And just like that, Binghamton was on the board. Not long after, Akira Kopec doubled to left, another jolt that said Illinois might be ahead, but they weren’t safe. Illinois starter Karley Yergler kept the damage limited, but the inning did what it needed to do for Binghamton: it woke them up, reminded them who they were, and made the game feel less like it was slipping away and more like it was setting up for a fight.

Illinois added to the lead in the fourth, scratching across a run on a Brennan RBI double to make it 5–1, and for a moment it looked like they might steady the game back into their control. But the bottom half of the inning was where the Bearcats made the loudest push of the morning. Rache Carey singled. Laure Payne doubled. Elisa Allen ripped an RBI double to bring in a run. The tempo changed again. Binghamton’s dugout got louder. The energy returned. And then Maddy Dodig stepped up and turned a tight game into a real one. Her two-run home run to left-center cut the deficit to 5–4 and sent a wave through the stadium — that specific kind of wave where a team down early suddenly believes again and the team ahead feels the pressure hit their shoulders.

That inning mattered because it transformed the game’s identity. What started as an Illinois advantage suddenly became a one-run game with momentum leaning Binghamton’s way. Illinois went to the bullpen, trying to calm the storm, and in the middle of all of it, there was another storyline unfolding that hit close to home for Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Binghamton freshman pitcher Taylor Crawley, a Valley View graduate, entered the game in relief. That’s not a small thing. That’s a local kid stepping into a Division I game on a national stage, facing a lineup that doesn’t give away at-bats and doesn’t let you breathe. This wasn’t a soft landing. This was a true test — long counts, traffic, pressure, the kind of inning where every pitch feels like it has weight. Crawley battled. And while the stat line won’t fully capture the intensity of what that moment demands from a freshman, the experience will. Those innings are valuable in a way people don’t always appreciate in February. They’re the innings that make you better. They’re the moments where you learn what the game feels like when the pace is relentless and there’s no space to hesitate.

And then the game turned again — for good — in the top of the fifth.

It didn’t start with a highlight. It started with the kind of thing that breaks teams if it snowballs: a throwing error. And once Illinois saw the door crack open, they didn’t just walk through it — they kicked it off the hinges. Keirys Click laid down a bunt single. More traffic. More pressure. Another mistake. Illinois did what good teams do in those moments: they kept the inning alive, forced Binghamton to keep making plays, and made every miscue feel twice as expensive. Moore delivered an RBI single. Runs scored on fielder’s choices. More unearned runs crossed as the inning expanded and Binghamton couldn’t find an exit.

That inning was the difference. Five runs came home in the fifth, all unearned, and the game went from a one-run battle to a 10–4 Illinois lead that felt like a wall.

Still, Binghamton didn’t quit. And that matters, because plenty of teams would. In the bottom of the fifth, Kopec singled and later scored when Carey came through again with an RBI single up the middle. It cut the margin to 10–5 and gave the Bearcats another small breath of life. They had 11 hits on the day. They had power. They had moments where Illinois was forced to react. They showed that when they execute, they can score in bursts and make big swings.

But the problem was the gap between “moments” and “full innings.” Against a team like Illinois, you can’t afford to donate outs, and you definitely can’t afford to donate innings. Five errors is the kind of number that turns a competitive game into one you spend the rest of the day regretting, because it doesn’t just impact runs — it extends at-bats, exhausts pitchers, and drains the dugout emotionally. Illinois didn’t need perfect baseball to win. They needed steady pressure and the ability to capitalize when Binghamton made it available. They did exactly that.

Illinois’ bullpen settled the game down after the chaos. Christina Crawford worked clean middle innings, and Abby Sabalaskey closed it out with control, making sure Binghamton never got the big inning it needed to truly threaten again. Illinois added one final run in the seventh, and the rest of the day became about finishing the job.

The final line showed Illinois 11 runs on 12 hits, Binghamton 5 runs on 11 hits — and that alone tells you this wasn’t a game where one team couldn’t hit. It was a game decided by execution, by defensive details, by which team could protect itself when the inning started to bend. Illinois bent in the fourth. Binghamton nearly took it. But the fifth inning snapped the game back in Illinois’ favor, and it never returned.

For Illinois, it was a win built on patience and pressure — the kind of win that matters in February because it proves you can absorb a punch, adjust, and still take control. For Binghamton, it’s a frustrating loss because the fight was real and the bats showed life, but the mistakes were too loud to survive. Yet even in that frustration, there were positives that matter for the long season ahead: the power from Podeszwa and Dodig, the continued production from Carey and Kopec, and valuable growth moments for a young staff that includes a freshman like Taylor Crawley learning in real time what Division I softball demands.

And for people back home in NEPA, seeing a Valley View graduate toe the rubber in a Division I game like that isn’t just a footnote. It’s a reminder. Those local reps matter. Those innings matter. February doesn’t define a season — but it shapes it. And Friday morning in Auburn, this game shaped both teams in very different ways.