FHSU Sports Information Department<\/p>\n
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. \u2013 Fort Hays State split a pair of conference games decided by one run on Friday afternoon (Mar. 25) at Northeastern State. Trailing 1-0 heading into the last inning, FHSU rallied for two runs in the seventh and defeated NSU 2-1 in the first game before falling in the second game 4-3 in nine innings. Paxton Duran recorded a career-high 15 strikeouts in the first game to go with her winning effort.<\/p>\n
Game 1: Fort Hays State 2, Northeastern State 1<\/strong><\/p>\n Facing one of the MIAA’s top pitchers in game one, the Tigers found a way to break through in the seventh in order to give Paxton Duran a win for her tremendous effort in the pitching circle.<\/p>\n Duran set the tone early by recording all six outs over the first two innings by strikeout, on her way to a career-high 15 strikeout performance. But the Tigers had to find a way to not let that effort go unrewarded as a solo home run allowed by Duran in the fourth was the difference in the game through six innings.<\/p>\n The Tiger offense stepped up in the seventh as Tori Beltz immediately tied the game with a solo home run of her own. Samantha Villarreal followed with a single and moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Duran. A grounder to the right side off the bat of Courtney Dobson pushed the runner to third, then Mackenzie Villarreal stepped up as a pinch hitter with a single to the right side to plate the second run of the inning.<\/p>\n Duran did not allow a baserunner in the seventh and capped the solid effort with her 15th strikeout, a new career high, to end the game. She allowed just one run on three hits and a walk, moving to 8-10 overall on the season.<\/p>\n Kayce Wooldridge retired 14 consecutive Tiger batters going into the seventh until Beltz broke through with the home run. Wooldridge moved to 12-5 on the season with the loss, allowing two runs on five hits with six strikeouts.<\/p>\n Game 2: Northeastern State 4, Fort Hays State 3 (9 <\/strong>inn.)<\/strong><\/p>\n After both teams played to a 3-3 tie through three and a half innings, Kayce Wooldridge and Paxton Duran settled into a pitching duel once again, but this time as relievers. Both teams went scoreless for four innings before Northeastern State broke the tie with a walk-off single in the ninth inning.<\/p>\n Wooldridge took over in the fourth for a struggling Delaney Gray, who allowed three runs to the Tigers through 3.2 innings of work. Kylie Strand hit a game-tying double in the fourth and then Rilee Krier had a single to chase Gray from the game. Wooldridge hit a batter to load the bases, but got a ground out to end the inning.<\/p>\n Duran took over at the start of the fourth inning for Carrie Clarke, who threw the first three innings and allowed three runs. Duran worked a 1-2-3 fourth, but had to work around base runners in the fifth through eighth innings to keep the RiverHawks off the board. In the ninth, she could not work around a leadoff double as Jessica Boone delivered a walk-off single to end the game.<\/p>\n Samantha Villarreal had two RBI in the game, providing the first two runs for the Tigers in the game. She had an RBI single in the first and a solo home run in the third. She finished 3-for-4 at the plate in the game.<\/p>\n FHSU put runners in scoring position in the fifth, sixth, and seventh, but could not find a way to push the go-ahead run across. Duran moved to 8-11 with the loss after just one run allowed in 5.1 innings of relief. She allowed seven hits and a walk, while striking out four. Wooldridge allowed just three hits and a walk with six strikeouts, holding the Tigers scoreless in her 5.1 innings of relief.<\/p>\n The Tigers moved to 13-18 overall and 7-7 in the MIAA, while Northeastern State moved to 18-15 overall and 6-6 in the MIAA. FHSU finishes its road swing in Oklahoma with a doubleheader at Central Oklahoma on Saturday (Mar. 26) at 12 pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FHSU Sports Information Department TAHLEQUAH, Okla. \u2013 Fort Hays State split a pair of conference games decided by one run on Friday afternoon (Mar. 25)… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4541,7349],"tags":[6818,2688,106,181,2926],"class_list":["post-26271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-softball-sports","category-sports","tag-roartigers","tag-fhsu-softball","tag-fort-hays-state-university","tag-miaa","tag-northeastern-state"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26271"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26273,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26271\/revisions\/26273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}