OMAHA, Neb. – The South Dakota State softball team completed a three-game sweep over their first Summit League opponent this season, by winning the third game by a score of 13-3 over the Omaha Mavericks (2-27, 0-3) on Saturday.

The Jackrabbits are now 24-7 overall and 3-0 in league play, tied the 1996 squad for the best-ever start to a season (through 31 games).

Lyndsey Crist jump-started the Jackrabbits in the opening inning, crushing the ball out of the park with two on base to give SDSU an early 3-0 lead. Prior to the Crist knock, Peyton Daugherty opened the game with a double to left center and Ali Herdliska walked on a 4-1 count.

Crist wasn’t finished however, cranking a solo shot over the left-center fence in the top of the fifth for a 7-3 Jackrabbit lead. She finished three-for-four with a single in seventh and a walk in the third, ringing in her first career four-RBI game.

Olivia Douglas held the Maverick offense to two scoreless innings before the Jacks’ offense tallied another three from Yanney Ponce’s first-pitch, two-run shot over the left-center fence and Megan Rushing’s RBI-double to bring home another.

Ponce finished with two hits – the home run and a double in the seventh – off five hits, including two runs scored and two runs batted in.

Rushing was second on the team in runs batted in with three and hit two doubles from four at-bats.

After Douglas orchestrated out of a two on, two out, situation in the second, the Mavericks responded in the bottom of the third. They tallied three in their favor from a three-run homer over left field, cutting the deficit to three.

Taylor Compton relieved Douglas at the start of the fourth inning and held Omaha scoreless for the remainder of the game, earning the last out of the game with a strikeout and allowing one hit and one walk through 14 batters faced.

After scoring only one through the second stretch of the game (Crist’s homer in the fifth), the Jackrabbits shut down any remaining hope for Mavericks in the seventh, tallying six runs from six hits and one UNO error.

Rushing hit her second double of the day to put the first two runs of the inning on the board with a liner to right field. Then Jacks chipped one-run plays in from there, scoring from an RBI-single by Baily Janssen and three unearned from two singles and a wild pitch. Janssen finished three-for-three with one run and an RBI.

Compton shut the door on the Mavs, sending the last three hitters back to the dugout, including the team’s first strikeout of the game for the final out.

Game Notes – South Dakota State has continue their best start at the Division I level and tied for the best-ever start in program history, as the 1996 squad went 24-7 through the first 31 games of the season.The Jacks reached the 20-win mark last Saturday, marking the earliest they’ve done it (date-wise) in program history. ... With two home runs Sunday, Crist is the first Jackrabbit this season to have multiple home runs in a single match-up, her first career multi-homer game. The last Jack to have two in a game was Ali Herdliska in 2018 (Western Illinois, 4/29). She also notched her first career four-RBI game. ... With three runs scored over the weekend, Herdliska is No. 2 all-time in the category with 129 ... short of the school record of 135 by Angie Friberg (1994-97). ...SDSU beat Omaha on Friday twice, 4-1 and 8-1, along with the 13-3 victory on Saturday to achieve the three-game sweep. It is the team’s first season sweep of a Summit League opponent since the 2018 season at Fort Wayne (4/21 - 4/22/18).

Up Next

The Jackrabbits take a trip to Lincoln, Neb. for a one-game match-up with Nebraska on Tuesday, April 2 before hosting Western Illinois in a three-game series on April 6 and 7.