MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.- After a rain day on Thursday, the Eastern University softball team picked up where it left off with another two wins. The six straight wins are more consecutive wins than the Eagles have put together at any stretch in the past five years. The Eagles used timely hitting and three pitchers to win a pair of one run games.

In the 9:00 am game, Eastern scored five times in the sixth inning and held on for a 5-4 win over North Carolina Weselyan (2-9). Molly Oberholzer delivered the big blow of the inning with a two run single. Megan Polulak, Maggie McGowan, and Janelle Fair also added RBI hits in the inning. 

The Battling Bishops rallied for two in the bottom of the sixth, and they scored a pair and had the bases loaded against Eastern starter Kristine Rosko in the seventh. Fair came on to record her first save of the year. Rosko allowed two earned runs in 6 2/3 innings to improve to 2-1 on the year.

The Eastern offense pounded out 12 hits and eight runs against a Dakota State squad that beat the Eagles 10-0 earlier in the week. Michelle Morongell and Maggie McGowan both hit two-run homers in the win. McGowan leads the team with four homrers in eight games. The junior shortstop now has ten for her career. 

Morongell hit her second bomb of the year in the first inning to give the Eagles a 2-0 lead before they took the field. Janelle Fair went to the mound for a single inning and allowed just one hit before leaving with an injury, so McGowan moved in from shortstop to finish the game. The defensive shift put some Eagles in new spots as Fair typically plays short when McGowan pitches. The Eagles, nonetheless, persevered.

Sam Terenzoni gave McGowan a little bigger cushion with an RBI single in the 2nd to make it 3-0 Eastern. McGowan gave up a single tally in the 4th, but she hit her homer in the top of the fifth to push the Eastern lead to 5-1. Jaclyn Gangemi drove in another run in the sixth to give Eastern a 6-1 edge headed into the home half of the sixth.

The game got interesting in the bottom of the inning as the Trojan attack came to life with four runs on four hits. In the top of the seventh, Tori Jacobson delivered a big RBi double to knock in McGowan who had reached on an error and Jaimie Schwartz, who had moved to shortstop, singled up the middle to drive in Jacobson for what proved to be a very important insurance run.

Dakota State (7-2) put their first runner on in the final frame and the next batter homered to close the gap to 8-7 before McGowan escaped the final inning with her second win of the year.

The Eagles (6-2) return home to resume classes and they will play at Haverford College on Thursday before starting Freedom Conference play at Misericordia on Saturday the 19th.