DAHLONEGA | The No. 11 University of North Georgia softball team split its pair of games on Sunday afternoon in the Captain D’s Surf & Turf Classic, falling to Wayne State (2-1) before beating Lincoln Memorial (6-0) later in the day. The Nighthawks are now 16-4 on the season.
Both games saw excellent pitching performances with the Nighthawks being on the wrong side in the first game when Wayne State’s Lyndsay Butler took a perfect game into the bottom of the seventh inning. In the second game of the day, it was UNG’s Courtney Poole who would take a perfect game into the sixth inning before being disrupted by an error and a hit.
Game One The first eight frames of the game were scoreless and it wasn’t until the top of the fifth that Wayne State broke through and scored an unearned run. The Warriors tacked on what proved to be a vital insurance run in the sixth with a RBI double into the right-center gap by Shelby Spano that gave WSU the 2-0 lead.
After going 18 up and 18 down in the first six innings, the Nighthawk offense finally showed some life in the bottom of the seventh. Taylor Anne Merritt led off the inning with a single to shortstop and advanced to third after back-to-back ground outs. With two gone, Tiffanie Burns laced a double down the left field line to score Burns and put the tying run in scoring position. Alexis Collis was hit by a pitch bring up Meagan May with a chance to provide a walk off hit, but May just missed driving a fly ball out to the warning track in center to end the game.
Meagan Stover (5-1) was tagged with her first loss of the season, throwing the complete game scattering seven hits while allowing two runs (one earned) with one strikeout and no walks.
Game Two Kim McMillan provided the spark for North Georgia in the second game of the day against Lincoln Memorial with a solo homer to straightaway center in the top of the first. It was the fourth home run of the tournament for McMillan. It was also the last time she would see a pitch to hit in the game, being issued three intentional walks in her last three plate appearances.
The Nighthawks added some more runs with a Laura Spivey RBI single in the second and a Katie Block sacrifice RBI in the fourth, both driving in May, to give UNG a 3-0 advantage.
May got her own chance to drive in runs, lacing a two-run double down the left field line in the fifth inning. UNG added one more run in the top of the seventh with an Ansley Phillips RBI single to right.
Courtney Poole (10-1) earned the win, facing just two batters over the minimum and allowing just one hit while not issuing a free pass and recording seven strikeouts.
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