CHICAGO, Ill. – The Northern Illinois University softball team slugged its way to a scrappy 10-8 victory over the University of Illinois-Chicago Wednesday afternoon at Flames Field.

NIU connected for 13 hits with Katie Keller (Geneva, Ill./Geneva), Courtney James (Fishers, Ind./Fishers), Ellis Erickson (Lutz, Fla./Freedom) and Kelly Walinski (Worth, Ill./Marist) leading the way with two hits apiece. Freshman Madison Mathews (Yuma, Ariz./Cibola) also connected for her first collegiate hit – a pinch hit double in the seventh inning.

"We're doing a really nice job offensively right now," Huskies head coach Christina Sutcliffe said. "We're scoring big innings and just keeping the momentum going. We got through two of their pitchers fairly easily and their third one kept us off balance for sure but our defense did enough to get us the win."

The Huskies did all their damage in the first three innings as they plated one in the first, five in the second and four in the third as they earned their third win in the last four games.

Erickson roped a run-scoring single, Keller drove in a run on a sacrifice fly and both Kara Apato (Oak Lawn, Ill./Marist) and Sam Mallinder (Plainfield, Ill./Plainfield North) laced RBI singles to highlight the five-run second.

"That's our fifth game in a row where our offense has definitely done a nice job of passing the bat," Sutcliffe said. "We were putting the ball in play hard and we were really aggressive on the bases."

UIC responded with a five-run bottom half of the second to pull ahead 6-5 on a two-run single, but NIU countered in the third with a two-run single from Walinski, an RBI sac fly from Mallinder and a run-scoring single to left field from James to establish a 10-5 lead.

Sophomore Emily Dato (Munster, Ind./Munster) earned her seventh win of the season as she worked five innings and fanned four batters while walking two before yielding to Claire Norred (Tipton, Ind./Tipton) for the final two innings.

"They both did a nice job pitching," Sutcliffe said. "We had the one rough second inning but Dato was able to bear down and get a couple of more innings under her belt then pass the ball to Claire, and Claire did a really nice job in relief."

The Huskies return to Mid-American Conference play this weekend when they host the University of Toledo April 29-30 with the first game Friday afternoon at 3 p.m.

"We need at the very least win the series for our last three series and hopefully get a sweep here and there, and see what happens at that point." Sutcliffe said.

-NIU-