The Heartland softball squad traveled to Florida this past week for its spring break trip in the Orlando area, playing six games across four days. The Hawks dropped the first two contests of the trip before winning three out of their last four to improve to 5-3 overall on the season.
 
Day 1- March 10
In a closely-contested battle, the Hawks kicked-off the trip against fellow Illinois school South Suburban College. After SSC took a 1-0 early lead in the first inning, the Hawks would respond with two runs in the bottom half followed by two more tallies in the second frame. Ellie Downing ignited the Hawks offense with a two-run homer in the first. Bella Moser and Lilly Mucha added long balls of their own in the second inning to push the Heartland lead to 4-1. After the Hawks tacked on two more runs in the fourth inning, the Bulldogs rallied for six runs in the top-half of the fifth frame and another in the seventh to secure the 8-6 victory.
 
Lake Michigan College was the foe for game two of the day, with Heartland ultimately falling 6-3. The Hawks would again jump out in front first, as Grace Wyman laced an RBI double to score Danielle Bogle in the third inning. Wyman would eventually score later in the frame to give the Hawks a 2-0 advantage. The Red Hawks responded with a run in the fourth and five more in the fifth inning. An RBI single by Bogle drove in the Hawks lone other run of the game.
 
Day 2- March 11
Heartland returned to face-off with Niagara County Community College the following morning, as the Hawks responded with 17 hits to take home a 9-4 win. Bogle, Downing, Wyman, Moser, Mya Robinson and Autumn Lage all had multi-hit games for the Hawks. The home team would score runs in every inning besides the second frame in the victory. Morgan Malone received the win in relief, as the freshman tossed five scoreless frames while striking out 5.
 
Once again the Hawks took an early lead over Black Hawk College in game two, but the Braves took advantage of some timely miscues in an 8-4 win. Robinson jump-started the scoring for Heartland with an RBI groundout in the first, which was then followed by a run-scoring single by Wyman to give the Hawks a 2-0 lead. An RBI groundout by Downing extended the Heartland lead to 3-0 in the second frame, but it was ultimately not enough. Black Hawk would take the lead in the third with four runs, and added three more in the fourth inning and another in the fifth.
 
Day 3- March 13
After a day off, the Hawks ended the trip on a positive note with two victories. In the first contest against Iowa Lakes Community College, the Hawks exploded for 19 runs on 15 hits to secure a 19-7 win. The Hawks scored three runs in the first, highlighted by sacrifices by Wyman and Moser to take a 3-0 advantage. After Heartland maintained an 11-6 lead through six innings of play, the Hawks scored eight more runs in the final inning to put the game out of reach. Robinson (3-5, 2 R, 2 RBI) and Lage (3-5, 3 R, 2 RBI) led the charge for the Hawks in the win.
 
Heartland rounded out the trip with a thrilling 5-4 win over Madison College. A Mucha hit to drive in Lage ignited the scoring for Heartland in the second frame, with the Hawks following that with four more tallies in the third to take a 5-0 lead. Wyman, Moser and Raeghan Morefield all delivered run-scoring hits in the frame. Madison College eventually responded with two runs apiece in the sixth and seventh innings, but it was ultimately not enough as the Hawks pulled out the close win.
 
The Hawks will return to action at 2:00 pm Friday for a doubleheader at conference foe Spoon River.