The Hamilton College softball team opened its final NESCAC West Division series Friday at Middlebury College. The host Panthers posted a 4-0 win in the first game of the three-game set, which concludes Saturday with a noon doubleheader.

The Continentals are now 10-20 overall and 3-7 in the NESCAC West Division; Middlebury improved to 14-8 on the year with a 2-4 division record.

Hamilton had several chances to tie the game late, putting two runners on base in each of the last three innings.

In the fifth Ashleah Yzaguirre '19 hit a one-out triple, but was tagged out at the plate on an attempted squeeze bunt by Delaney Nicol '19. Nicol moved to second on a walk to Olivia Gozdz '16, but the Panthers – who led 3-0 at the time – retired the potential tying run to get out of the inning.

Daphne Assimakopoulos '17 and Phoebe Collins '18 led off the sixth with back-to-back singles but Middlebury's Neve Stearns retired the next three hitters to preserve the Panthers' lead.

After Middlebury pushed across a fourth run in the bottom of the sixth, the Continentals threatened in the top of the seventh, starting with Nicol drawing a walk. Gozdz singled to left field and took an extra base when the ball was booted in the outfield as Nicol went to third. That brought the tying run to the on-deck circle but Stearns shut down the last two hitters for the complete-game win.

Stearns allowed seven hits and four walks in raising her season record to 4-5. Molly Leitner '19 threw 3.1 innings of three-hit relief for Hamilton.

Middlebury took a 3-0 lead in the second. After singles by Siobhan O'Sullivan and Erin Giles started the inning, Hye-Jin Kim doubled in a run, Kat Maehr followed with an RBI single and Kati Daczkowski finished the outburst with a run-scoring single up the middle.

The Panthers tacked on a sixth-inning run when Ali Della Volpe was hit by a pitch and came around to score on a single and a pair of illegal pitches.