Box Score (Game 1)
Box Score (Game 2)

ELLENSBURG (Mar. 6) -- Junior Lauren Hadenfeld (Vancouver/Evergreen HS) had a career-high 11 strikeouts, and Kelsey Haupert (Olympia/Black Hills HS) hit a three-run home run to help Central Washington University to a 3-1 victory over visiting Saint Martin's University in a Great Northwest Athletic Conference softball doubleheader on Saturday afternoon at Gary & Bobbi Frederick Field. Saint Martin's won the second game, 4-2, to earn a twinbill split.

The Wildcats are now 4-4 on the season and 4-2 in GNAC play. Saint Martin's is now 4-7 overall and 3-3 in conference action.

Haupert's first home run of the season broke a scoreless tie in the bottom of the fourth inning of the opening game, helping the Wildcats take a 3-0 lead against the Saints. That proved to be all the offense that Central and Hadenfeld (2-1) would need, as the junior right-hander scattered seven Saint Martin's hits and threw 105 pitches in earning the complete-game win. The only run for the visitors in the game came in the sixth inning, when the Saints pieced together three of their hits, including the last of three singles in the game for Morgan Klemm.

Central managed just five hits in game one, with five different individuals accounting for those hits.

In game two, the Wildcats were playing catch-up from start to finish and were never able to get the tying or go-ahead run in suffering a 4-2 loss.

Saint Martin's earned a pair of two-out walks in the first inning, and Kelsey McGladrey's ensuing three-run home run to left field gave the Saints the early lead. Central scored its first run in the bottom of the second on a RBI triple by senior Danielle Monson (Marysville/Marysville-Pilchuck HS), but she was left stranded at third base.

Each team scored once in the fifth, as Jaimee Aiwohi had a RBI single for Saint Martin's, and Haupert delivered a run-scoring double for the Wildcats in the bottom of the inning. Central had a chance to do more damage with a pair of runners in scoring position and nobody out, but a double play on a pop  up and a fly out ended the team's threat to cut into the deficit. CWU managed just one hit over the final two innings -- a two-out infield single by Monson in the sixth.

Monson had two of Central's seven hits in the nightcap against two Saint Martin's pitchers, while McGladrey and Aiwohi had two hits apiece for the Saints off the Wildcats' Lindy Baxter (Lacey/River Ridge HS) (1-3) and Katriina Reime (Hoquiam).

The two teams will wrap up their four-game series on Sunday with another doubleheader, this time beginning at 11 a.m.