The Weber State University softball team overwhelmed Snow College on Saturday afternoon, defeating the Badgers 20-3 in 10 innings.

“I thought it was really good for us to come out and be able to score early,” said WSU head coach Mary Kay Amicone. “As we settled in, I thought our pitchers did an amazing job of getting ahead of hitters and putting them away. As a team, we are making progress. It’s so fun to see the level they are committed to getting to. The bottom line is, progress is what makes us happy.”

Wildcat pitcher MaCauley Flint came out red hot, striking out the first seven batters she faced. Flint allowed three runs on five hits in five innings.

“It felt really good to go out and have a good start,” Flint said. “I felt that everything is working. Our hitters did awesome, so it was easier for me to get strikes.”

The Wildcats got on the board in the bottom of the first as junior Malia Campos scored off of a blooper to right field by Brooke Silva. WSU led after one inning 1-0.

The Wildcats let pitch after pitch go by in the second, most of them balls that gave them multiple walks, including walking two runs in. With the bases loaded, Campos hit a hard ground ball toward the second baseman. The ball took an awkward bounce and rolled all the way to the outfield fence. Campos hustled around the bases and scored, driving in four runs on the error. The Wildcats batted around the lineup nearly twice in the second inning, scoring 12 runs.

“Softball and baseball are funny games,” Amicone said. “You get momentum and it’s contagious; hitting is contagious. If they can’t put us away, we are going to score a lot of runs, because we are pretty deep. We are pretty deep with our hitting and our speed.”

The Badgers got it together in the top of the third. After two straight walks, SC got its first hit off of Flint, loading the bases. SC scored on the very next at-bat with a sacrifice fly to left field, bringing the score to 13-1.

The 12-run second inning seemed to throw Flint a little off her game, seeing as she sat out for so long.

“I should have been a little bit smarter about that,” Flint said. “I knew we were hitting, and I went out there about halfway through the inning and started to throw a little bit. But I should have thrown more. I started to tighten up a little bit, so out there I tried to warm up a little bit.”

The Wildcats’ bats cooled down slightly in the next two innings, as they scored just one run in the third and three in the fourth, building the lead to 17-1.

The Badgers scored again in the top of the fifth, as sophomore Danielle Soffe went yard. The Badgers added another run off of a single, bringing the score to 17-3.

“What MaCauley did was great,” Amicone said. “The game is a game of adjustments. As they adjusted, it slowed down a little bit. But she and Morgan were definitely dominant today.”

After WSU scored another run in the bottom of the fifth, both teams were held scoreless in the next two and a half innings. Each team’s defense played tight, not allowing extra base hits and making diving grabs.

The Wildcats added runs in the eighth and ninth innings, winning the game 20-3.

“No matter what the score is, it’s not about the score — it’s about our improvement,” said Amicone of the preseason game. “We can see that every day at practice. I am really happy that they are just getting better.”

The team will conclude its preseason schedule over Fall Break, with a game on Thursday versus the College of Southern Idaho, and finish the schedule Saturday with two games down in Provo.

Players are excited with how they are coming along.

“There’s always room for improvement, but today we came out and we hit well, we fielded it well and we pitched it well,” Flint said. “You can kind of go away from this weekend feeling pretty good, but know that, come Monday, that we need to keep building. We are not where we want to be yet, but we are getting closer.”