CAMBRIDGE, Mass.  -  The 7-seed Coast Guard Academy softball team's 2025 campaign came to a close on Thursday morning after 5-seed Wheaton College (Mass.) walked-off the Bears for a 4-3 NEWMAC Tournament elimination game victory.

The Lyons advance in the loser's bracket for the win and will face the winner of the 12:00 PM game between 4-seed Worcester Polytechnic Institute and 3-seed Springfield College.

Junior pitcher Dana Walker (Macon, Ga.) pitched the entire game and allowed seven hits and two earned runs while striking out five. Coast Guard recorded just five hits in the contest, all from different batters, with freshmen Hayden Reilly (Prosper, Tex.) and Madeline Kibler (Effingham, Ill.) each hitting doubles.

The Bears had runners on the corners with one out after Reilly led off the game with her two-bagger and sophomore Abriana Schmutz (Marysville, Ohio) advanced her to third with a single to left field. Schmutz got into scoring position at second on a passed ball before junior Bridget Bartz (Arlington, Va.) drove both runners in another single to left.

Wheaton started their at-bats with an extra base hit, as well, after leadoff woman Juliette Zito legged out a triple on a ball hit to center field. Walker got the next two batters out before Peyton Blankenheim-Brown brought Zito in with a single to right.

Walker and Lyons starting pitcher Sofia De La Rosa blanked their opposing sides over the next three innings before Coast Guard found another run in the top of the fifth. Freshman infielder Lauren Ragonese (Liverpool, N.Y.) started the inning with a single down the left field line before advancing to third on Kibler's double.

Ragonese was thrown out at home on a fielder's choice play in the following at-bat, but Kibler advanced to third and crossed the plate in the next one on a sacrifice fly out by Reilly.

In the bottom half, Wheaton had runners on first and second with one out when an infield grounder was thrown away. The runner from second scored to make it a 3-2 game, while Wheaton now occupied second and third. They'd tie it up in the next at-bat after the third base runner scored on a fielder's choice. 

Walker struck out the next two batters to get out of the fifth and blanked the Lyons in the sixth, while De La Rosa shut out Coast Guard in the sixth and top of the seventh. In the bottom half, Wheaton had runners on the corners with two outs when Blankenheim-Brown singled up the middle to walk-off the Bears and advance her team.

Schmutz's single put her at 46 hits for her campaign, a few shy of becoming the 21st player in program history to record 50 base knocks in a season, while Walker just missed out on the second 15-win season of her career and the 17th in program history.

Walker's 152 strikeouts is the ninth-best season total in the Bears softball record book, while her 6.41 strikeouts per seven innings sits at eighth in single-season history. Sophomore infielder Mack Murnane (Wilmington, N.C.) finished the year with 12 doubles, the first to hit that many since 2012.

The game was the last in the careers of senior captains Natalie Beck (Billings, Mont.) and Veronica Krystofik (Colchester, Conn.).