Rockville Centre, N.Y. - Tournament Most Valuable Player Sarah Clancy pitched St. Thomas Aquinas College to 3-0 and 8-1 wins over Molloy University on Saturday to win its second straight East Coast Conference Softball Championship at the RVC Sports Complex.

It was a memorable afternoon for the second-seeded Spartans. They entered the game needing to win two games against top-seeded Molloy and rode Clancy's tremendous pitching, clutch hitting and exceptional defensive play to the title. The two wins also pushed STAC's record to 33-22 to break the program's 44-year record for wins in a season.

STAC earned an automatic bid in East Region of the 64-team NCAA Division II national championship tournament. The East Region schedule will be announced Monday at 10 a.m. on the NCAA Selection Show with games beginning May 9.

"The team showed a lot of character by winning three games in row to take the championship," said STAC Head Coach Kristen Sullivan. "Sarah Clancy was terrific for 14 innings and was the dominant player in the tourney. Our team is very young so this is one of my most satisfying titles."

STAC's Elyse Marcano lined the first pitch of today's first game into center field for a single and the Spartans never looked back. She advanced to second on Jessica Feerick's single and then scored the game's first run on Tara Hagan's sacrifice fly. Nayah Diaz drove in a run in the fourth inning and Eliana Raposo drove in an insurance run with a single in the seventh inning.

Clancy surrendered four hits in posting the shutout. She received exceptional defensive help from freshman right fielder Aliya Feerick. She saved a run with a diving catch in deep right field in the first inning and then made a running catch of a line drive and made a strong throw home to prevent the runner in third base from tagging up and scoring. She finished with six putouts in the game. Marcano also played well at second base.

In the clinching second game, freshman Nayah Diaz continued her clutch hitting with a two-run single in the first inning to give Clancy all of the offensive support that she would need. Jessica Feerick's RBI sacrifice fly and Hagan's run-producing single extended the lead to 4-0 in the fourth inning and the Spartans plated four more runs in the sixth inning to ice the game.

The Spartans totaled nine hits against three different Molloy pitchers. Marcano, Raposo, Diaz and Amanda Demmerle finished with two hits each. Demmerle's stolen base in the sixth inning was her 18th of the season that set a new program record for single-season steals.

The sweep culminated a hard-fought matchup this season between STAC and Molloy. They met seven times this season with STAC winning four times.