STATS | VIDEO
 
PENSACOLA, Fla. – Conference play continues for the University of West Florida softball team this weekend, as it heads to Livingston, Alabama, for a series with West Alabama on Friday and Saturday. The Argonauts are 14-3 overall with a 9-0 Gulf South Conference record, while UWA holds a 12-9 record and a 4-2 GSC mark.
 
With winter weather coming through the southeast over the weekend, there was a slight schedule change. The series will now start with a doubleheader on Friday at 3 pm at the UWA Softball Complex, and the series finale will be at 1 pm on Saturday.
 
Fans who cannot attend the games can follow along with a live video broadcast and live stats, both of which are at the links above and on GoArgos.com.
 
For all information on the team, follow @UWFSoftball on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
 
ABOUT LAST WEEK AND KELSEY SWEATT
West Florida picked up another sweep over the weekend, with three big wins at Christian Brothers. The bats stayed hot, with eight home runs and a .686 slugging percentage, leading to 33 runs over the three-game set. Madelyn Vasquez and Laurynn Boggs each hit .500 – Vasquez had a pair of doubles and a homer, along with four walks, and Boggs hit the first two home runs of her career, with a game-winning grand slam in Game 2 on Saturday and a team-high nine RBIs.
 
Kelsey Sweatt was outstanding in the circle, with 23 strikeouts in 13.2 innings and a 1.02 ERA. Sweatt also earned the victory in each of the three games, and she struck out a career-high 16 batters in her Game 1 start. That was the second-most strikeouts in a single game in program history, just two off the pace of Sandy Morgan in 2001 and Cindy Weibert in 1992, and it was the most for an Argonaut since May 2005.
 
Sweatt has been in the hunt for top spots on the UWF career leaderboards all year, and last weekend's work continued to move her up. She now ranks second in UWF history in hits allowed per seven innings (4.53), third in strikeouts per seven innings (6.84), and seventh in total strikeouts (406). She is also fourth in career winning percentage (.769) with a career 50-15 record.
 
ABOUT WEST ALABAMA
West Alabama is pesky. The Tigers took an extra-innings win over Lubbock Christian, now ranked No. 15 in the country, to start the season, before taking another win over Columbus State to wrap up the Gulf Coast Invitational. The team then dropped three games at the UAH Charger Chillout before scoring 10 unanswered runs against now-No. 4 Indianapolis. The team holds a 4-2 GSC record so far this year and is 12-9 overall.
 
Kacy Noland and Cassie Matlock lead the team offensively. Noland is hitting .403 with a pair of home runs and a team-high 16 RBIs, and Matlock is batting .389 with 11 stolen bases. UWA ranks second in the GSC with 55 stolen bases on the year, and seven players have stolen at least five bases.
 
UWA is near the top of the league in the circle as well, with a 2.82 ERA and 94 strikeouts that both rank fourth in the GSC. Hannah Mynard is UWA's leader on the staff, with a 2.44 ERA over 57.1 innings. She ranks fourth in the conference with six wins and is seventh in opponent batting average (.215), just behind Kaeleigh Crutchfield (.207). Crutchfield has a 2.88 ERA in 41.1 innings with 30 strikeouts.
 
SLUGGING AS USUAL
It took the UWF offense a couple of weeks to heat up, but the lineup has been about as good as ever since the start of conference play. West Florida is slugging .690 in GSC action, with Madelyn Vasquez, Laurynn Boggs, and Angela Agurkis each slugging over 1.000.
 
UWF is slugging .501 overall, which would be a program record. That is no surprise for an Ashliegh McLean-run team – in the four years that McLean has been UWF's head coach, the team has posted four of the top six slugging percentage marks in program history, including this year. Last year's team set the UWF record by slugging .494 and hit a program-best 51 home runs. The teams in 2019 and 2020 slugged .449 and .454, respectively, which currently rank as the fifth- and sixth-best slugging percentages in team history.
 
ANGELA AGURKIS LATELY
Senior Angela Agurkis has been no slouch at the plate. A three-year starter, Agurkis has already hit a career-high three home runs and she is well on her way to setting career bests in virtually every offensive category.
 
The senior catcher leads the Gulf South Conference in slugging percentage (.897) and OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging) at 1.435. She is also fourth in OBP (.538) and fourth in doubles, with 6. Perhaps the most impressive note about Agurkis is that she's tallied 11 hits this season and nine have gone for extra bases.
 
LAURYNN BOGGS THE SLUGGER
Outfielder Laurynn Boggs played in 45 games and made just three starts in her first two seasons at UWF. She had a pair of doubles and three RBIs, all of which came last season, and she hit .357 in her first two years.
 
At Christian Brothers last weekend, Boggs broke out. She hit two home runs, including a game-winning grand slam in Game 2 on Saturday, and she drove in nine RBIs. Of course, four of those came in Game 2, but she added another five in Game 3, with a three-run home run, a walk, a stolen base, three runs scored, and a two-run single. It was a career weekend for the junior from Longwood, Florida, as she hit .500 and scored a team-high six runs in the series.
 
Boggs is second in the GSC in slugging (.846) and OPS (1.346), behind only teammate Angela Agurkis this year.
 
IT'S A STREAK
West Florida is now on an 11-game winning streak, and the team could not be playing much better. The Argonauts are hitting .346 and slugging well over .626, with 15 home runs, and the pitching staff has thrown to a 1.30 ERA with 77 strikeouts over 70 innings of work, with opponents hitting just .148.
 
Madelyn Vasquez leads the team in batting (.483), home runs (4), RBIs (17), and on-base percentage (.625), and Angela Agurkis isn't far behind. Agurkis is hitting .478/.613/1.130, with that slugging percentage leading the team during the winning streak.
 
Jessica Ford (.455), Teala Howard (.452), and Erin Moon (.429) are each hitting well above .400 during the streak, and Morgan Zettle (.391) and Laurynn Boggs (.385) aren't far behind.
 
The pitching, of course, has been outstanding as well. Kelsey Sweatt leads the team with a 6-0 record in the last 11 games, with 41 strikeouts in 31 innings and a 1.13 ERA. Jeya Prasad leads the trio of Argonaut pitchers with a 0.95 ERA and a .105 opponent batting average, and Montana Young has struck out 19 in 17 innings, along with throwing a perfect game on February 26.