Bearcat softball traveled to Vermont with the hopes of continuing its rise up the America East standings this weekend, riding high off of their extra innings upset against the UMBC Retrievers last week. And in the matchup of AE cellar dwellers ‘ the teams came into the weekend with a combined 4-25 record ‘ the Catamounts came out on top, sweeping the Bearcats 1-0 and 5-3 on Saturday and winning 4-1 in Sunday’s finale.

Sophomore pitcher Cyrilla Suker, despite having a rough season, has now strung together several impressive outings in a row. In Saturday’s first game, she went the full six innings, giving up only six hits and one earned run while striking out six along the way.

But the offense couldn’t help her out in this pitchers duel as Suker’s counterpart, Vermont’s junior pitcher Aimee Kern, went the full seven innings, striking out eight in a complete game shut out performance.

In games two and three the offense finally put some numbers up against the Vermont pitching. Meghan Quinn hit her second home run of the season, but the runs were too little too late, especially considering the runs came late in games when BU was in catch-up mode.

Game two saw the Bearcats down 5-0 by the third and they didn’t score until the sixth. In game three, Binghamton saw its first lead of the weekend as senior outfielder Stephanie Woodcock gave them a 1-0 lead with an RBI single in the second, but that lead was quickly erased as Vermont took advantage of two costly errors in the bottom of the inning to take a 2-1 lead. The Catamounts never trailed again.

In dropping all three games against Vermont, BU dropped back to the bottom of the America East standings, a position they had finally battled out of last week. And heading into their last week of play, they will look to end the season on a high note, but with only two more games against America East competition they are mathematically headed for last place.

The remainder of the schedule has the Bearcats playing at Cornell tomorrow, followed by a game Thursday at Colgate and a game back home against Maine this weekend. Game time against the Big Red, which is 32-13 and 13-7 in Ivy League play, is set for 3 p.m. Wednesday in Ithaca.