Staff photo by Steve Muscatello New Ulm’s Carli Botton slides into third before Stephanie Bauman of Worthington can tag her Tuesday at New Ulm High School.

NEW ULM — Ashlyn Donner continued to assert herself as one of the area’s top pitchers and the New Ulm bats’ came to life in the fifth inning, lifting the Eagles to a 7-1 win over Worthington at New Ulm High School in Big South Conference softball action on Tuesday.

Donner struck out 16 and allowed just one earned run on five hits and no walks in the complete-game win. She allowed Worthington (7-6, 6-6) to get on the board in the third inning after a two-out RBI single by Sophie Wietzema scored Haley Grimmius, who reached earlier on a double to left field.

Other than surrendering four hits in the first three innings, Donner went about her business as usual, striking out the side in both the fourth and fifth innings and allowing just one more hit after that.

“I trust my team 100 percent,” Donner said. “We scored nine runs off of them last time (9-0 win at Worthington on April 23), so I wasn’t really worried. I took a few of my pitches away because they didn’t work right away in warmups, so that might have been a reason why they got on me right away. But I trust my defense and my batters and it turned out.”

The Eagles (9-1, 6-1) failed to get on top of the ball for the majority of the game, popping out a total of eight times in the first four innings alone. The fifth inning, however, the Eagles struck gold.

A leadoff double by Ellie Bute to deep left-center field was followed by an infield single by Erin Gleisner in the bottom of the fifth to get things started in the right way for New Ulm. Joey Batt then dropped in an RBI single to left-center to score Bute and tie things up at 1-1.

A bunt single by Carli Botten filled the bases for Noelle Forstner, who gave the Eagles the go-ahead run after her sacrifice fly brought Gleisner home.

“It was really big, it was so important for us to get on top of the ball because we needed to score,” Forstner said of the Eagles’ strong fifth inning. “Our defense was there, but if we can’t hit, we can’t do anything. So we just needed to hit, and once we did, it all fell into place.”

Batt then scored on a groundout by Madeline Gag before a wild pitch brought in Botten for a 4-1 New Ulm lead after five innings.

New Ulm added three more insurance runs in the sixth inning for the final score, with Bute scoring on a throwing error, and Batt and Gleisner scoring on wild pitches.

Sydney Ponto took the loss for Worthington, pitching five innings and allowing four runs.

New Ulm was led at the plate by Batt, who was 2 for 4 with two runs scored and an RBI. Nora Windschill also added two hits for New Ulm, one a triple, while Bute and Gleisner each went 1 for 2 with two runs scored apiece.

New Ulm travels to Waseca next for a 5:30 p.m. conference game on Thursday.