St. Thomas softball team dedicates game to youngster with blood cancer

Sports Thursday, April 6, 2017

St. Thomas University’s softball team dedicated one of last month’s games to Brady McLaughlin, a six year old boy who has been diagnosed with aplastic anemia. The day, tagged "Brady Day" honored Brady and his family while helping raise funds and awareness to delete blood cancer. Brady was presented with gifts in a pre-game ceremony and threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

As part of the initiative, the Bobcats organized a Swab Donor Jam in which they asked participants to swab their cheeks in hopes to find a match to help Brady find a bone marrow donor. 

In the doubleheader, St. Thomas dropped two games to Ave Maria by final scores of 5-1 in game one and 13-1 in game two.

In game one, St. Thomas was scoreless until the fifth inning. A powerful double to left center from Jennifer Acevedo set her up to be the lone scoring run for the Bobcats. An error by AMU brought in the sophomore to give STU its only lead of the game. 

The final game of the series went in favor of the Gyrenes as an explosive 3-run homer in the second inning, along with a 10-run seventh inning, capped off the series sweep. 

The lone run in the second game for the Bobcats came in the bottom of the sixth from a ground out RBI from Kaitlin O’ Hara. Emily Santos scored on the play after reaching base with a double earlier in the inning. 

Santos started the game and pitched 4.1 shutout innings in a no-decision.