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Sports

Eagan Tumbles To Burnsville in Season Softball Opener

One big inning dooms Wildcats as they draw defending Class AAA state champions in season's first game and fall 7-3

It was about as tough a season opener as you could ask for.

Eagan opened the season on the road against defending Class AAA state softball champion Burnsville at Burnsville and fell to the Blaze 7-3 in a 2011 girls softball opener Friday.

Eagan played well, especially offensively. But Burnsville pushed across five runs in a decisive second inning to take the South Suburban Conference contest.

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It was Eagan’s third straight loss to Burnsville, including two 1-0 games last season, the second of which knocked the Wildcats out of the section playoffs. The Wildcats will get a second shot at Burnsville this season, but will have to wait until May 4.

Eagan led 1-0 heading into the bottom of the second when the Burnsville bats awoke in the second. Burnsville senior captain Megan Lehnan and junior Laura Nadeau had run-scoring singles as the Blaze exploded in the second for five runs.

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“I thought we hit pretty well today against a solid pitcher,” said Lehnan. “We hit our pitches well up there at the plate.”

Burnsville led 5-1 after two. Eagan closed to 5-2 after a run-scoring sacrifice in the third, but that was as close as the Wildcats could come.

The Wildcats had some success against Burnsville pitching ace Kelsey Anderson, knocking her for five hits and drawing five walks. But the team couldn’t put a string together offensively.

“I was really happy with how they made adjustments at the plate,” said Burnsville head coach Hillary Hansen of her team. “The first time through the order their pitcher really took advantage of our hitters. We made some adjustments and were able to score some runs.”

After that second-inning outburst the game settled down, but Burnsville was never headed and led 7-2 most of the contest.

Despite holding a large lead most of the game, Hansen said she didn’t feel any less pressure.

“I’m never relaxed against Eagan,” Hansen said. “I don’t think I could be up by 100 runs and relax against Eagan. They’re a very good team and I have a ton of respect for them. We, luckily, had a bunch of pressure situations yesterday that we kind of got to work through and we’ll take all the experience we can.”

Sophomore Abby Brinkmeier went 2-for-4 with an RBI to led Eagan offensively, Morgan Haus reached base three times and scored a run.

“I was very happy with our offensive production tonight,” said Eagan varsity head coach Courtney Dully. “We got a lot of runners on, we executed a lot of bunts. We played good defense we just had one really tough inning when nothing seemed to go our way. We just have to learn from that.

“They have a very good pitcher,” Dully added. “We did OK as far as the offensive expectations that I did have. We just got to keeping working on our defense and keep working on our pitching. ”

Burnsville improved to 2-0 after edging Lakeville North 4-3 in nine innings on Thursday.

The Wildcats (0-1) play at Eastview Monday in a game starting at 4:15 p.m.

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