LeTourneau softball finished their 2017 season with an offensive explosion that included four home runs and a season-high 14 runs scored. The YellowJacket defense also was in peak performance as they held Howard Payne to just one inconsequential run in the bottom of the fifth inning.
 
LETU (15-25, 10-20 ASC) won their final American Southwest Conference series of the season 2-1 in the "Battle of the YellowJackets" as Howard Payne shares the same mascot and namesake.
 
LeTourneau hit .531 as a team, their highest average of the season. Included in the offensive barrage were four home runs, the most in a single game since the 2004 season, when LETU also hit four homers against Howard Payne. 10 YellowJackets recorded hits including a season-high five doubles.
 
Senior Whitney Judd led off the game with a triple to right center field to put herself in scoring position. Judd was 3-for-4 on the day with three runs scored. Junior Ashlin Roach started the scoring onslaught when she homered to left field to bring home two of her five RBIs.
 
After a Macey Mize double and Madison Gray walk, junior Bailey Woodard sent another shot over the left field fence to take a commanding 5-0 lead after the opening frame. It was the second homerun of the season for Woodard.
 
Ashlin Roach made a curtain call in the second inning when she homered in her second at-bat. The solo homerun was the seventh over the season for Roach as she ranks third in the ASC in home runs.
 
The senior duo of Whitney Judd and Courtney Matulis teamed up to bring a run across in the fourth inning. Judd led off the inning with a double to left field. Matulis followed with an RBI single as Judd turned on the afterburners to score from second.
 
Whitney Judd and Courtney Matulis each stole a base in the game and cemented their places in the LeTourneau record books. Judd finishes fourth all-time with 32 career stolen bases and has the second-most in a single-season with 24 back in 2014. Matulis finishes as the all-time leader in stolen bases with 62 on 66 total attempts. She is also the single-season record holder with 28 this season.
 
The bats stayed ablaze in the fifth as Hayley Hurley led off the inning with a single to left field. Senior Kaitlyn Allen stepped to the plate and recorded her first homerun as a YellowJacket. The two-run blast put LeTourneau on top 9-0.
 
The hits would keep on coming with eight total in the fifth inning. Matulis doubled to left field to score Kelsi Coleman who reached on a double of her own. Ashlin Roach followed with a 2-RBI triple that scored both Judd and Matulis.
 
Kaitlyn Allen snagged her third RBI of the inning at her next at-bat when she singled to left field to score Shelby Barrick who reached on a walk.

Junior Ashley Burdine earned her fifth win of the season after allowing just one run on nine hits. Burdine forced nine flyouts and four groundouts in her complete game, five-inning effort.
 
The win today marks the end of the 2017 season for LeTourneau softball and the end of three careers as seniors Kaitlyn Allen, Whitney Judd, and Courtney Matulis wore the YellowJacket uniform for the final time.
 
UT Tyler will host the American Southwest Conference tournament starting on Thursday, April 28^th.