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By Andy States
SMAC Content Manager

By the time the North Point softball team took the field for Thursday afternoon's game against the visiting Leonardtown Raiders, it had been a solid week since the team had last taken the field.

With the Eagles' most recent memory a 8-7 loss to Great Mills a week before, the team needed to 'get well' according to Coach Tony Jones. Erin Pronobis helped with that early, leading off the home half of the first with an inside-the-park home run. The hosts tacked on a run in the second and exploded for six in the third to rebound with an 8-3 win.

"They needed it," Jones said. "We had a loss to Great Mills, which was a bad loss for us. They needed to bounce back."

Leonardtown (3-7) had two one with one out in the top of the first, but Tiffani Whaley pitched out of trouble by inducing a ground ball and then finished the half-inning with a strikeout. Pronobis then led off the bottom half by ripping a shot to the gap in right-center.

"If felt good," she said. "I haven't really been hitting as well as I did last year. It felt good to actually hit a home run."

After North Point (5-5) increased the lead to 2-0 in the second, the team -- aided by a couple of Leonardtown errors -- broke the game open in the third.

Tori Kibler led off with a three-bagger down the left-field line and scored on Tori Willett's ground ball, and with that run the floodgates opened. Mollie Smith, Nina Garner and Jenny Subocz each contributed RBI hits, while Pronobis' RBI single pushed across the sixth and final run of the inning.

Leonardtown, which was only able to come up with two base hits on the day, managed to score a pair of runs in the fourth and scratched out another in the fifth. But Whaley controlled things over the final two innings, recording five strikeouts.

Whaley finished the game with 13 strikeouts, walked five and surrendered just two hits -- both to Monica Peters. Pronobis and Alexis Gayon each had two hits to pace the Eagles' eight-hit attack.

With weather having plagued the schedule of the last couple of weeks, the Eagles are looking at a busy stretch in the next two weeks. And after a rocky 10-game stretch to start -- including injuries that have changed the team's lineup almost daily -- North Point is looking to find some consistency down the regular-season stretch.

"We're going to keep working," Jones said. "We have a good team. We have that problem with focus. We get out here and don't focus and it shows. When they come out here and they're serious you see a different ball team."

"Keeping our spirits up," Whaley said could be the key to a successful regular-season finish, noting that the team sometimes slips in the middle innings.

Three of North Point's five losses came by one run, while another came by a 17-14 count to Huntingtown. By and large, the Eagles have scored runs, but Jones thinks an improved defensive performance will critical as the team moves towards the postseason.

"You know, we've always prided ourselves on our defense being strong and we worked hard to get decent offense," he said. "We're scoring runs. This team has done pretty well scoring runs this year, but our defense has got to be solid."

North Point 8, Leonardtown 3
L    0 0 0  2 1 0  0 - 3 2 5
N    1 1 6  0 0 0  x - 8 8 2
WP: Whaley, LP: R. Peters
2B - Gayon (N); 3B - Kibler (N); HR - Pronobis (N)

astates@digitalsports.com