Falcons Ready for Weekend Series with CMU at Meserve Field

Saturday, March 14

Bowling Green, Ohio

1 p.m.

Bowling Green State University

Central Michigan

Peyton Steffes, Indya Smith | Sept. 20, 2025

Photo by: Drake Harlett, BGSU Athletics

March 13, 2026 | Softball

BGSU Notes

BGSU faces the Chippewas in Saturday DH, Sunday single game

By: by Mike Cihon, BGSU Athletics

• The Bowling Green State University softball team, off to a 12-8 start to the season, begins both the home and the Mid-American Conference portions of the schedule this weekend. Head coach Michelle Gardner and the Falcons welcome Central Michigan University to Meserve Field for a three-game series.

• The Falcons and Chippewas are scheduled to play a Saturday (March 14) doubleheader, with the first pitch of game one scheduled for 1:00 p.m. Then, the teams will close the series with a Sunday (March 15) single game, beginning at 12:00 p.m. There will be an audio stream for all three games, thanks to BG Falcon Media Sports.

• Admission is free to all BGSU home softball games.

THE FALCONS – A QUICK OVERVIEW
• The Falcons, as mentioned, are 12-8 on the season. BGSU is three-fourths of the way to matching the win total for all of 2025.

• This year's team is 5-4 in true road games and 7-4 in neutral-site contests. The Falcons have more than doubled the road win total for all of '25, having gone 2-19 in such games last spring.

• Head coach Michelle Gardner and her assistants, Greg McQuillin and Indya Smith, welcomed back 15 of 19 letterwinners from last year's team, including all nine positional starters and three of the six pitchers who saw action in 2025.

• That 2025 club surpassed the overall and Mid-American Conference win totals for the previous two years combined. BGSU went 16-36 last spring, after posting a combined record of 15-79 in the 2023 (9-41) and '24 (6-38) campaigns.

• In MAC play, BGSU was 7-19 last year, after going a combined 5-51 in the previous two seasons.

• BGSU had four seniors on last year's roster. Two of those four players did not see action in 2025, and only one of the four players saw action in any games after March 8.

• At the plate, the players returning in 2026 combined for ...
   • 1,339 of the team's 1,362 at-bats (98.3%) in 2025;
   • 212 of the 219 runs scored (96.8%);
   • 195 of the Falcons' 198 RBI (98.5%); and
   • 360 of the team's 361 total hits (99.7%).

• In the circle, returning Falcons combined to pitch 215 of the 328 1/3 total innings (65.5%), including 134 1/3 of the 167 2/3 innings (80.1%) in MAC action.

• The 2025 Falcons scored 219 runs, the fourth-highest total in program history, and last year's BGSU club also ranked in the top five in school history in runs per game (4.21, fifth); RBI (198, third); walks (153; fifth); batters hit by pitch (32, third); on-base percentage (.350; fifth) and sacrifice flies (13, tie-third).

• Addie Martin was named to the MAC's All-Freshman Team in 2025. She hit 13 homers, the second-highest single-season total in program history. Martin became the first player in program history to hit at least 12 homers and steal at least 12 bases in the same season.

THIS SEASON...
• The Falcons are hitting .280 as a team heading into the CMU series, with four regulars batting over .300. Redshirt sophomore Addie Martin and freshman Hannah Simko are hitting .368 and .333, respectively, with juniors Taylor Behrendt and Cameron Kaufman each batting .323.

• Martin leads the team with six doubles and seven homers. She also paces the club in RBI (25), on-base percentage (.514) and slugging pct. (.842). Simko has a team-high 11 stolen bases, while Martin and Kaufman have nine apiece.

• Behrendt has 21 hits to tie Martin for the team lead, while both Simko and Kaufman have 20. Kaufman has scored 21 runs to tie Martin for team honors in that category.

• Behrendt, Kaufman, Martin, senior Hannah Hunt and junior Peyton Steffes each have started all 20 games to date.

• In the circle, senior MacKenzie Krafcik has appeared in 13 games, starting 10, and has seven complete games in those 10 starts. Krafcik has a 7-3 record with one save and a 2.57 earned-run average.

• Sophomore Madison Wendel and junior Alyvia Roth have pitched in nine and eight games, respectively. Wendel has made seven starts and is 1-2 with a 4.80 ERA, while Roth has a 2-2 record and an opponent batting average of just .259.

THE OPPONENT / THE SERIES
• Central Michigan brings a 9-10 record to BGSU this weekend. The Chippewas went 2-2 in a neutral-site series vs. USC Upstate last weekend. Angela Petrovitch and Jenna Kuzara are batting .485 and .406, respectively, with three other regulars hitting at least .333. In the circle, Mackenzie Langan has made nine starts and Brooklyn Compau eight. Compau is 4-4 with a 4.57 ERA in a team-high 41 1/3 innings, while Langan has pitched 36 innings and is 3-3 with an ERA of 4.67. Head coach McCall Salmon welcomed back 15 letterwinners from the 2025 team that went 26-25 overall and 17-8 in the MAC.

• The Falcons trail Central Michigan, 86-29, in the all-time series, and the Chippewas have won the last eight meetings. Last season, Central swept a three-game set in Mount Pleasant by scores of 4-2, 7-0 and 6-4 (April 19-20, 2025). BGSU's last wins came in 2022, when the Falcons swept a regular-season doubleheader at Meserve Field (3-1 and 5-0; May 4, 2022), then captured a 1-0 win in the MAC Tournament nine days later (May 13, 2022). BGSU is 16-33 at home, 11-42 on the road and 2-11 at neutral sites vs. the Chippewas over the years.

DOWN THE ROAD
• Following the CMU series, the Falcons will open the road portion of the MAC schedule with a trip to Kalamazoo, Mich. BGSU will meet Western Michigan in a single game on Friday, March 20, followed by a doubleheader the following day (March 21).

FOLLOW THE FALCONS
• For more information on the BGSU softball team, follow the Falcons on Twitter/X (@BGAthletics and @BGSUSoftball) and Instagram (@bgsu_softball), as well as on the web at BGSUFalcons.com.