CLEVELAND, Miss. – The University of West Florida softball team improved to 30-4 on the year and 13-1 in Gulf South Conference play with a pair of wins at Delta State on Saturday afternoon, stretching the team's lead in the conference standings to two games. UWF has reached 30 wins in just 34 games this season, the fewest contests it has taken the Argonauts to reach that mark since 2005, when they needed just 31 games to do so.
 
UWF is the first GSC team with 30 wins this season.
 
UWF pitchers Grace Gilbert and Kelsey Sweatt posted a 1.00 ERA for the day, combining for 10 strikeouts, 3 walks, and a .224 opponent batting average in the doubleheader sweep. Offensively, West Florida got clutch hitting from Kathleen Smiley and Ally Merrill in particular, as each tallied two RBIs.
 
Game 1: UWF 5, DSU 3
Timely offense was the story for West Florida in Game 1 – the Argonauts scored a pair of runs in the third and fourth innings to take a 4-0 lead at the halfway point of the game. Teala Howard scored the game's first run – and her first of four runs scored on the day – doing so on a wild pitch after she led off the inning with a bunt single. Rhiannon Sassman came in just a few batters later on Jacquelynne Poling's RBI single to right field.
 
Mika Garcia led off the fourth with a single to right, and after stealing third, the sophomore came around to score on a grounder from Howard. Sassman singled to left field a batter later to score Howard and stretch the UWF lead to 4-0.
 
West Florida would add one more insurance run in the seventh run, after DSU scored in each of the previous two innings. Smiley led off the frame with a single and advanced to third after Callan Taylor put down a sacrifice bunt and DSU delivered a wild pitch. Smiley scored the Argos' final run when Gilbert stole second and the Lady Statesmen made an error in the effort to catch her at second.
 
Gilbert was sharp in the circle, especially in the first four innings. Through the first four frames, the GSC leader in wins struck out five DSU batters and allowed only two hits. Gilbert, a sophomore, finished the day with six strikeouts over seven innings, as she threw her eighth complete game of the season.
 
Game 2: UWF 5, DSU 1
Kelsey Sweatt turned in a dominant start to earn her 10th win of the season, striking out four and allowing only five hits over seven innings. The sophomore allowed just one earned run in the start, and she has now allowed zero or one earned run in 12 of her 15 appearances in the circle this year.
 
Through the first six innings of the game, Delta State could muster only two hits against Sweatt, who leads the GSC with a .156 opponent batting average.
 
Offensively, UWF got out to a quick lead with an RBI single from Courtney McLellan – the first of her two hits in the game – and an RBI from Ally Merrill on a fielder's choice. In the third, Smiley added a two-run single, scoring Sassman and Howard, and Merrill picked up another RBI with a double that brought in McLellan.
 
Those runs were more than enough for Sweatt, whose only real red mark in her start was a seventh-inning solo home run by Ta'mya Johnson.
 
West Florida will go for the sweep on Sunday, with first pitch scheduled for 1 pm in Cleveland.