After a 3-12 non-conference start, it looked like it might be a long season for the Eastern softball team.

But in the last week the Panthers have turned things around and find themselves in good position to make a late season run for the Ohio Valley Conference championship.

Coming off a three-game sweep at the hands of Tennessee Tech last week, the Panthers snapped a five-game losing streak when they beat Southeast Missouri in a two-game series.

Before the game, the Redhawks head coach Lana Richmond said that the midweek OVC series with Panthers would go down to the wire and Eastern was a team waiting to break out.

She couldn’t have been more right about either.

Eastern came from behind in each of their victories over SEMO, winning each of the games in the last inning and going 12 innings in the first game.

Before the series with Eastern, SEMO was the hottest team in the conference, knocking Samford out of first place and winning seven of its previous nine OVC games.

The Panthers seemed to have taken that momentum from the Redhawks and are making a run of their own.

Eastern took two out of three from Austin Peay over the weekend; including two more come-from-behind wins.

One reason for the Panthers’ hot streak is the pitching staff stepping up on the mound, especially senior pitcher Heather Hoeschen.

In the last four Eastern wins, Hoeschen has picked up the win.

In those four wins, two starting appearances and two relief appearances, Hoeschen has allowed just three earned runs in 22 innings.

That’s not to take anything away from the other two starting pitcher for the Panthers, freshman Karyn Mackie and sophomore Andrea Darnell.

Mackie has shown maturity on the mound despite just being a freshman, and Darnell has been hampered by injury and threw a two hit, one run effort in a 1-0 loss against Tennessee Tech April 17.

But you have to give credit to the Eastern bats in its recent run. After combining for only two runs in three games against Tennessee Tech, Eastern has averaged 4.6 runs per game in their last five games.

So with the seven OVC games remaining in the season, Eastern will have to keep it up if they hope to make the tournament in an extremely balanced conference.

Dan Renick is a junior journalism major. If you want to find about his “hot streak” you can e-mail him at [email protected].