The Muhlenberg softball team - and its leadoff hitter in particular - came out swinging on its first day of the 2018 season, falling to a pair of quality teams at the D9 Sunkissed Games in Kissimmee, Florida.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, which won 29 games and earned a regional ranking last year, won a back-and-forth opening game, 7-4, and Ohio Northern, a 25-win team in 2017, took the second game, 10-5.

Senior Hanna Caiola swung at the first pitch in both games and doubled both times. She also homered and singled twice, reaching base in her first six plate appearances of the season.

Caiola led off the first game with a two-bagger and eventually came around on a bases-loaded walk. WPI scored twice in the bottom of the first, but the Mules reclaimed the lead when an infield pop was dropped with the bases loaded in the third, allowing two runs to score.

WPI seesawed back in front with two runs in the bottom of the third, but Caiola (pictured above, somewhere in there) led off the fourth with her third career home run to tie the game at 4-4.

Muhlenberg put runners in scoring position later that inning and in the next two but could not score again. WPI scored two go-ahead runs in the fifth and added another in the next frame.

Caiola singled in the fifth to tie the school record, set many times previously, of four hits in a game.

RBI singles by senior Karissa Astrella and junior Kristy Selby in the bottom of the first gave the Mules a 2-1 lead in the second game. Ohio Northern scored five in the second to go ahead 6-2, but Muhlenberg came back with three in the bottom of the inning, with Astrella and senior Amelia Shelley driving in runs.

Ohio Nothern kept the Mules off the board for the rest of the game, adding four runs to pull away.

A pair of freshmen, Sophie Chong and Elise Enslin, recorded their first career hits in the second game, while sophomore Sydney Carey notched her first extra-base hit with a double.