MIAMI SHORES, Fla. – The third-ranked University of West Florida softball team finished off a 5-1 weekend on the road with a pair of wins over Barry on Saturday. UWF (7-4) took the first game 9-3 and shut out the Buccaneers 2-0 in the back end of the doubleheader.
 
UWF had its best offensive day of the year, hitting .345, slugging .545 and scoring 11 runs against the Barry pitching staff. Meghan Toney led all batters with five hits, Tori Perkins had a team-high four RBIs, and Rachel Wright tallied seven total bases and a 1.000 slugging percentage.
 
Olivia Printiss and Grace Gilbert each threw complete games and combined for a 1.00 ERA for the day with five strikeouts. It was the first complete game of the season for each pitcher, and also the first shutout of Printiss' UWF career.
 
UWF pitching combined for a 1.02 ERA over 41.1 innings in the southern part of the state this week. Sarah Maloney and Printiss both finished the road trip with a perfect 0.00 ERA, and Maloney led all UWF pitchers with a pair of wins, 18 strikeouts and a .196 opponent batting average.
 
The bats also got going a bit more over the last six games, with UWF hitting .282 as a team. Freshmen Mika Garcia, Ally Merrill and Gilbert each hit .400 (4-10) and each had at least one multi-hit game over the weekend to lead UWF at the plate. Tori Perkins, fueled by a four-RBI game on Saturday, led West Florida with seven hits and six RBIs on the weekend.
 
Game 1: UWF 9, Barry 3
The UWF offense blew up in the first half of the Saturday doubleheader, scoring nine runs with a season-best 13 hits. Rachel Wright got things going immediately, with a leadoff home run on the third pitch of the game. It was the first leadoff homer for UWF since Jacey Castro did the same against Valdosta State in the South 1 Region Final on May 13 last year. Wright also doubled later in the game, drove in another run and scored a second time.  
 
But Wright was just one of several Argonauts to tag the Barry pitching staff in Game 1. Meghan Toney had four hits for the third time in her career, scored twice, and stole two bases, and Tori Perkins drove in four runs and added three hits. Freshman Ally Merrill had a two-hit day in her second career start, and she's had at least one hit in all four games in which she's had an at-bat this year. She also drove in a run, as did Jacquelynne Poling and fellow freshman Mika Garcia.
 
Starter Grace Gilbert went the distance for UWF, earning her third win of the year in her first complete game effort. The freshman now has a 1.56 ERA for the season and struck out three batters, while adding two hits of her own in the batter's box, including an RBI double.
 
The only major threat Gilbert faced came in the bottom of the second, when she was in some trouble after walking two batters and hitting one. With the bases loaded and no outs, Gilbert forced a weak ground ball to Rhiannon Sassman, who made the play at home for the first out. Gilbert then struck out Taylor Checkley and got a popout from leadoff hitter Sam Busekrus to end the threat and hold Barry scoreless.
 
Gilbert also had some defensive help from Toney, who turned a pair of double plays in the fourth and fifth innings. Toney has now played a part in a Gulf South Conference-best five double plays this season.
 
Sassman scored twice in the game, reaching on a walk and a hit by pitch. She now ranks third in the UWF record books, having been hit by a pitch 17 times in her career.
 
Game 2: UWF 2, Barry 0
Olivia Printiss had little trouble in her first start of the year, shutting out Barry in Game 2 and earning the win. She allowed just five hits and no walks and struck out two in the effort, and she has not allowed a run in 10 innings pitched this year.
 
Kathleen Smiley scored the game-winning run on a Rachel Wright single in the third inning, and she cashed in a major insurance run with her first home run of the season in the seventh. That home run is the 13th of Smiley's career.
 
Barry put together a pair of threats, in the fifth and sixth innings. Back-to-back singles from Geneva Santos and Catie Falcon put runners on first and third with one out in the fifth, and UWF was pulled out of a jam when a fly ball to center field was caught by Courtney McLellan and thrown home, when Santos was tagged out on after a short rundown.  
 
The Bucs had two runners on again in the sixth, but Printiss forced a weak popup from Peyton Rawls and got Anieliese Palmeiro to hit a one-hopper to Garcia at short to end the frame.
 
Printiss capped off her stellar game by forcing a pair of groundouts and striking out Santos in the seventh.
 
Jibrasha Moore recorded her second two-hit game of the weekend and her third of the year in the second half of the doubleheader.
 
West Florida will play Shorter, West Alabama and Delta State at the GSC Crossover on Saturday, February 17 and Sunday, February 18, in Montgomery, Alabama.