Softball's winning streak grows to seven

RELATED CLICKS:
Game one box | Game two box | NC season stats | Bears sign three more

OGDEN, Utah -- What has gotten into the Northern Colorado women's softball team?

Megan Hamilton and Kelli Henderson had four hits apiece Friday, and Henderson struck out seven in seven innings to help the Bears sweep Weber State 6-3 and 10-5 in a Pacific Coast Softball Conference doubleheader.

Megan and Erin Wilkinson both hit home runs, too, for Northern Colorado (10-28), which won for the seventh consecutive time and improved to a perfect 6-0 in the PCSC at Wildcat Softball Field.

The two teams will meet again at noon tomorrow in another doubleheader.

"I'm proud of the kids," Northern Colorado coach Mark Montgomery said. "They executed extremely well. We managed to get out to early leads, and that allowed us to kind of put it in cruise control down the stretch of both games."

The Bears took a 5-0 lead in the third inning of game one with four hits, including a triple each from Henderson and Megan Wilkinson. Melanie Buol and Hamilton also had hits in the frame.

In game two, Northern Colorado puts runs on the board in four of the first five innings and led 7-0 heading into the bottom of the fifth.

That kind of offense and pitching that resulted in 12 strikeouts in 14 innings was too much for the Wildcats (8-26, 1-5), who lost for the sixth straight time against Northern Colorado.

Henderson (8-12) started game one and struck out five and walked none with two hits allowed in five innings. She later came on in relief of Megan Wilkinson in the seventh inning to get a save and a win in the same game.

Jamie Juelfs (2-12) started the second half of the doubleheader and won for the second time this year after striking out three and allowing three runs in five innings. Henderson pitched two innings of relief.

Megan Wilkinson finished 3-for-6 across the two games, with three runs scored, and Buol, Erin Geddis and Liz Smith had two hits apiece in contributing to an increasingly potent offense that totaled 19 hits with a .655 slugging percentage Friday.

"We had good pitching and good timely hits again today, and we certainly played good defense, too. Hopefully it will continue again tomorrow, and we'll play as well as we played today."