CLEARWATER, Fla. – The North Carolina Central University softball team was only able to score one run against a couple of institutions from 'Power Five' conferences on Saturday afternoon at the NFCA Division I Leadoff Classic, losing 4-1 to University of Iowa and 7-0 to 13th-ranked University of Utah.
 
NC Central (1-3) will wrap up play at the NFCA Leadoff Classic with a single game on Sunday against Indiana University at 10 a.m.
 
GAME ONE: Iowa 4, NC Central 1
 
The Hawkeyes scratched out one run in four different frames and three different Iowa pitchers held the Eagles to just four hits with seven strikeouts as the Big Ten program remained undefeated on the season.
 
Freshman third baseman Soo-Jin Berry sparked the Hawkeye offense with a trio of run-producing hits, tallying her RBIs in the first, fifth and seventh innings She accounted for three if Iowa's seven total hits.
 
NCCU avoided the shutout with back-to-back hits in the bottom of the seventh. Senior shortstop Jaylah Barr came up with a one-out double to center field and then scored on an ensuing pitch-hit single down the left field line by junior Jaidyn Hamby.  
 
Iowa (3-0) won the postseason NISC (National Invitational Softball Championship) to end its season last year, so the Hawkeyes have now won seven straight games over the past two seasons.
 
GAME TWO: No. 13 Utah 7, NC Central 0
 
The Utes, who went to the Women's College World Series last season, slowly pulled away to the seven-run triumph. Utah (3-1) scored in each of the last four innings, including three runs in the final frame, to pull away in a contest that NCCU was outhitting the Utes, 3-1, through the first four innings.
 
Sophomore Makiya Graves, who tallied a pinch-hit single in the seventh inning of the Iowa game, added another single in the first inning against Utah to start the season on a four-game win streak. NCCU spread out it six hits over five different frames. Those half dozen singles also came off the bats of six different Eagles.
 
Utah graduate student Haley Dunning was the only player on either team to produce two hits. Junior Kaylah Nelsen supplied two RBI while sophomore Karlie Davison scored twice. Senior Sarah Ladd (2-0) hurled six shutout innings with five strikeouts for her second win of the season-opening event.
 
Hamby singled in the sixth to hit safely in both of NCCU's games on Saturday.
 
NCCU had runners on the corners in both the fifth and sixth innings, but Ladd ended both innings with a strikeout.
 
Junior pitcher Ashanti Eubanks (1-1) suffered her first loss of the season despite holding the preseason nationally ranked team to just one hit over the first four innings. The Pac-12 power she was facing recorded eight of their nine hits over the final three frames.
 
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