Staff photo by Ari Selvey Martin Luther College’s Hannah Ott tags out University of Minnesota Morris’s Anna Baumann in a Upper Midwest Athletic Conference softball game at MLC.

NEW ULM — Despite putting nine batters on base, Martin Luther College was only able to push one runner home in a 7-1 loss to the University of Minnesota Morris on Friday at MLC.

MLC also got in trouble early with a handful of errors, which cost them a run in the first inning.

“One of our goals this week was no preventable errors,” MLC head coach Becca Doering said. “We’re working on those little things, because we feel like we’re right on the cusp and we’re one little step away. The girls are fighting and we’re trying to figure out things to try to take that step over, and today was just not that. We’re excited to take another swing at it tomorrow.”

The teams will rematch in a doubleheader scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Jessica Horn took the loss in the circle for MLC, allowing 13 hits and four earned runs in seven innings pitched. Jordyn Heckendorf was 3 for 4 with a double and a run scored for the Knights, while Lisa Hoffer was 2 for 3 with an RBI. Chloe Berg added a 2-for-3 performance with a double.

Alice Wilkinson started the scoring for the Cougars, singling to left field for an RBI in the first inning. Sierra Stevens doubled in the second to bring home Olivia Losee to increase UMM’s lead to 2-0.

The Knights recovered defensively, throwing out a stealing Anna Baumann at third in the top of the third. MLC strung together some hits in the inning, with Heckendorf singling to left field before Hoffer hit a double to left center field, bringing Heckendorf home from first base.

Berg singled to bring Hoffer home, but the third out of the inning cut the scoring short for the Knights.

UMM scored three more times in the fourth inning and twice more in the fifth, quickly regaining control of the game.

MLC’s defense came together in the later innings, retiring the side in the sixth and pulling off a double play in the seventh. The offense sputtered, however, with Berg’s double in the sixth and Heckendorf’s single in the seventh being the only two hits over the final two innings.

“I thought overall we fielded well,” Doering said. “We had a couple things we needed to clean up, but just minor things. We saw change from the beginning half of the game to the second half. The last two innings it was three up, three down, and we’re really proud of our defense for that. We got a hit at the end of the day, we got to string a couple of things together, but we left a couple of runners on base in key situations. Just trying to figure out how to string things together, but we’re working on it and talking as a team to try to make those adjustments.”