While the bats didn’t crack as much as Donna Martin had hoped, her softball team showed positive signs this weekend at the Missouri Round Robin tournament.

Playing under the domed roof of Missouri’s indoor football complex, the Huskies went 1-3 this weekend. Better pitching control paved the way for NIU’s first victory of the season against Western Illinois University on Sunday.

The Huskies (1-8) gave up no walks in the contest, compared to 7 walks in five innings during the WIU’s 8-0 shutout against the Huskies on Saturday.

Senior pitcher Courtney Witvliet keyed the Huskie victory by coming in as a relief for freshman Amy Krahilia and sparking the 3-2 triumph over the Westerwinds. In her first three games, Witvliet has gone 1-2 with a 3.78 ERA and has a team-best 17 strikeouts. With the Huskies trailing 1-0 Sunday, senior second baseman Bethany Carroll smacked a base hit to give the Huskies a 1-run lead.

“I think we did a better job this weekend overall,” Martin said. “We played better, which is what we wanted from the first weekend (NIU went 0-5 at the Auburn tourney) We had better consistency on defense and at pitching.”

The heartbreaker of the tournament came against Conference USA powerhouse DePaul.

NIU grabbed a 3-0 6th inning lead against the Blue Demons (4-0) before DePaul junior Shavaughne Desecki belted a 2-run double, scoring four runs in the 6th inning to halt the momentum.

The Blue Demons tacked on three more runs in the 7th to coast to victory.

Martin believes her team has played fairly well on the field, but she feels her team needs to respond offensively in order to win more contests. As a team, NIU has batted just .176 and has talllied just 13 hits and 39 runs.

“Defensively, we played pretty well,” Martin said. “[But], we didn’t have any offensive performances.”