North Texas Daily

Jordan Ottaway // Staff Writer

The season is two weeks old and the Mean Green softball team is already making history.

With UNT’s (10-3) 18-0 win against Prairie View A&M University Friday afternoon at Lovelace Stadium, the team set program records in runs scored in a game and longest overall win streak at nine games.

“This team is playing with a lot of confidence,” head coach Tracey Kee said. “When you can work extremely hard in practice and see it pay off in games it makes it a lot easier.”

The Mean Green started the game hot with a five-run first inning that began when junior infielder Danielle Hoff hit a home run to deep right field to put UNT up 1-0. UNT is a team that tends to score early with 37 percent of its runs coming in the first two innings.

From there UNT took control and didn’t look back with excellent base running and took advantage of the Prairie View (0-2) pitching struggles, when senior pitcher Cally Falls hit two players. This gave junior outfielder Kat Strunk the chance to hit a line drive shot and bring in three runs home contributing to her five total RBI.

“Tonight was the best I’ve done in a while,” Strunk said. “It felt good to come out right off the bat, get on base and help my team anyway I could.”

The biggest inning of the night was the bottom of the third when the Mean Green laid down a nine-run inning with three triples in a row by senior infielder Jordan Terry, sophomore utility Taylor Shoblocher and Strunk. Senior infielder Brooke Foster later brought in her own three-run home run to put UNT up 11-0.

UNT wasn’t only effective from the plate, but also from the mound. Junior pitcher Madison Thompson had a great outing as she pitched a complete game and only allowed three hits to improve her record to 2-1 on the season.

“I thought I did pretty well tonight shutting them down,” Thompson said. “You can always get better and tighten stuff up, but overall I feel like I did well.”

Kee said she was happy with the aggression the team showed on base and getting extra base hits with confident swinging.

“We know our park well,” Kee said. “When it hit the wall, we weren’t thinking about double out of the box. We were thinking triple.”

The Mean Green will continue the Texas Shootout Saturday when the team will take on Stephen F. Austin University. First pitch is scheduled for 5:00 p.m. at Lovelace Stadium.