Same hits, different day for Pine Creek softball.

The Eagles finished Thursday with 15 hits and tallied 14 RBIs at Lewis-Palmer High School to earn a 17-1 victory in four innings over the Rangers in the season opener for both teams.

“We have a little more continuity this year than we had last year,” Eagles coach Travis Eberly said. “The girls are clean, we have some good freshmen who came in this year. We have some juniors who are now seniors and we’re a more experienced team.”

With their road victory, the Eagles now have six wins in a row in season openers and have scored at least 16 in each of those contests. One of the victories during that stretch includes the Rangers, who the Eagles beat 16-15 in the 2024 opener.

Pine Creek dodged a furious comeback from the Rangers last year, but the savvy Eagles Eberly spoke about soared against Lewis-Palmer. Five players had at least two hits for the Eagles including Grace Kempf, who ended the day 3-for-3 with a walk, four runs and three RBIs.

“I think this type of day comes with team chemistry,” Kempf said. “You have your teammates in the dug out cheering for you, and building off the energy from the dug out is vital. That helps you go out and do your best when you’re up to bat. It’s a confidence booster, and I think we’ve showed that.”

Pine Creek scored three runs in both the first and second and added four more in the top of the third inning to build a 10-0 lead. Lewis-Palmer battled to avoid losing via the 10-run rule when Joella Streeter’s RBI single sent Braelyn Perry home to make it 10-1 after the third inning.

But the Eagles extended their lead in the top of the fourth with their best inning of the day and posted another seven runs in the frame.

“Before every game we set a team goal and that’s to score every inning and we always hold ourselves to that standard,” Kempf said. “We set that goal and that helps us stay focused and that also means we have to bring it on defense. Defense helps translate to offense.”

In last season’s meeting, the Eagles led 12-5 after five innings when the Rangers scored nine in the sixth, which forced Pine Creek to stave off Lewis-Palmer’s surge. On Thursday, the Eagles ensured their opponent wouldn’t have another late-game resurgence. Kyleigh Croyle, who pitched a full game in the circle and had six strikeouts, expressed her confidence in her teammates who she said “dominated” all aspects of the matchup.

“Having a good bond between pitcher and catcher makes the biggest difference,” Croyle said. “(Kailani Shideler) we did some winter workouts together and you could see the pay off in this one. … I was hitting my spots a lot more and attacking the zone. Credit to my team for waking the bats up in the first game.”

The Eagles earned three consecutive outs to end the game, their only three up, three down of the day. Eberly noted the importance of the players’ club coaches, how they prime them for the prep season and how Pine Creek works to continue that growth.

“Our philosophy is to play clean and outscore everybody else,” Eberly said. “We’re not going to try to strike out 17 people a game. We’re going to go out there and hit hard and play solid defense and it helps that we have two freshmen who came in and know how to play the game well.”