The Hillsdale College softball team picked up two huge road wins on Saturday to stay in the G-MAC race, using rallies and late runs to sweep Malone.

It took ten innings to decide the first game, as the Pioneers scored three runs in the fourth and sixth innings to tie up the game and force extras. Hillsdale broke through with the winning runs in the top of the 10th with Emma Sather as the international tiebreak runner on second base.

Leadoff hitter Ronnie Craft legged out an infield single on a would-be sacrifice bunt to start the inning, then stole second to give Hillsdale two runners in scoring position. Taylor Lewis drove in Sather for the go-ahead run on a ground-out and Sydney Davis tacked on an insurance run by scoring Craft from third on a sacrifice fly.

With the lead restored, Hillsdale's Mackenzi Maxson finished off an impressive 10 inning complete game with a 1-2-3 inning, including a strikeout, to earn her seventh win of the season.

Maxson was tough as nails for the Chargers on the mound, throwing 157 pitches in a marathon performance and fighting off potential Malone walk-offs in the eighth and ninth innings to give Hillsdale the opportunity to win the game in the 10th. The senior from Flower Mound, Texas struck out eight and walked three on her way to the victory.

The instigator of the winning run, Craft had a stellar game at the plate to lead Hillsdale, going 4 for 5 with a RBI and four stolen bases. Along with her heroics in the 10th, Craft drove in the Chargers' first run on a RBI single in the top of the third, helped score the second run on a first-and-third play later in the inning that allowed Emma Sather to steal home, and reached home plate herself on a double by Nathalie Hagle to give Hillsdale an early 3-0 lead.

Anna Chellman finished a home run short of the cycle in the contest, with a single, a double and a triple in four at-bats, and Sather stole two bases as well.

In the nightcap, Hillsdale rallied from a 3-1 deficit with four runs in the top of the sixth inning, then held on for a 5-4 win to sweep the doubleheader.

Trailing by two runs late, Hillsdale led off the sixth with back-to-back singles, forcing a pitching change, then took advantage of an error that loaded the bases with a RBI hit by pitch from Olivia Liguori, and a sacrifice fly by Medleigh Danchak that tied the game. With runners on second and third, Chellman, still hot at the plate, delivered the game-winning hit, a two-run single to the shortstop that gave Hillsdale a 5-3 lead. 

A RBI double by Malone in the bottom of the sixth meant Hillsdale held just a one run edge entering the top of the seventh, but Katie Jonas, on in relief for the Chargers, struck out the first batter and put the next two down in order to secure her fifth win of the season. Jonas pitched four and two-thirds innings with three strikeouts, one walk and just one earned run conceded, in relief of starter Anistyn Foster who had two strikeouts in two and a third innings.

Taylor Lewis had a solo home run in the second at-bat of the game for the Chargers and went 2 for 4 at the plate, and Nathalie Hagle added two hits as well.

Hillsdale improves to 22-15 overall, 10-4 in the G-MAC with the victory, and remains in striking distance in the G-MAC race with the sweep. The Chargers are still in fifth place in the standings, but sit just a half-game back of both Findlay and Ashland, and can pass at least one team in front of them in the race if Hillsdale gets both halves of a doubleheader at second-place Ohio Dominican, starting tomorrow at 2 p.m.