ALLIANCE, Ohio - Christopher Newport University is one win away from capturing the Mount Union Regional of the 2026 NCAA Division III Softball Championship. The Captains upped their record to 30-11 on Friday by beating the host school, Mount Union, by a score of 8-5.
Keith Parr's team will play in the Championship on Saturday morning at 11:00 a.m. against the remaining team in the four-team, double elimination regional. CNU's opponent in the final will be decided following Friday's final game at Rafeld-Rogers Field between Penn College and Mount Union.
Parr called on junior
Haylee Callahan to start Friday's game vs. the Purple Raiders, and Callahan responded by pitching into the seventh inning and earning the victory. Callahan, making her first start since March 29th, held Mount Union to four earned runs on eight hits and improved her record to 7-3 for the year. She was relieved by sophomore
Caroline Alger with one out in the seventh and two runners on base. Alger faced four batters and induced a pop up to short with the bases loaded to end the game, and earned her third save of the season in the process.
"The decision was all about the match up going into the game," Parr said after the victory. "Haylee has been working hard and Mount Union tends to bunt the ball quite a bit...so I thought she'd be a good choice to get things started from a defensive standpoint. She certainly did a good job and kept us in a position to win the game."
Christopher Newport, the home team in the game by virtue of a coin flip, did not score in the opening inning after the Raiders had claimed a 1-0 edge in the top of the first. CNU would go on to score in all five innings following the first. Junior
Candace Slaw plated two runs in the second inning on a single to center that brought home both sophomore
Cora Thomas, who had singled, and freshman
Olivia Miller, who had walked to reach base.
Mount Union jumped back ahead with a two-run third inning, only to see the Captains tie the game in the bottom half when junior
Brooke Zuber singled to lead off and later scored on a Mount Union throwing error. Both teams would score a single run in the fourth, with the Captains pulling even at 4-4 when senior
Isabel Hall smacked her fifth home run of the season over the fence in right-center field. Christopher Newport would use the long ball again to go ahead to stay in the fifth inning, when Zuber led off the frame by blasting her team-leading 11th home run of the season over the fence in right. The Captains would add three insurance runs in the bottom of the sixth inning on a run-scoring fielder's choice off the bat of sophomore
Alexah Gordon, and a two-run single from junior
Simone Thompson to give the Captains an 8-4 lead.
The Purple Raiders used a single, an error, and two walks to mount their rally in the seventh, but left the bases loaded to finish with nine runners stranded by CNU pitching. Mount Union fell to 30-7 with the loss.
Slaw reached base three times in four at bats, with two singles, two runs batted in, and a run scored. Zuber also had two hits, a single and home run, as CNU scored its eight runs on eight hits. The Captains had at least one hit in each inning off Mount Union pitching.
"The plan going into any tournament is to win and keep yourself in the driver's seat," Parr continued. "These back-to-back wins certainly limits the amount of innings played and gives us some valuable rest. Fortunately, we're playing pretty good softball at the right time, and now we have to continue to play well on Saturday."
The Captains will play either Penn College or Mount Union, the two teams they have defeated in the regional, in the championship Saturday. Penn knocked out Lebanon Valley with a 4-0 victory in Friday's second game of three. Another update will be made to this story once Saturday's opponent is determined.
