The Dominican University softball team fell to the Lakeland College Muskies 13-3 on Thursday afternoon in the first round of the Northern Athletics Conference (NAC) Softball Tournament. The Stars, the tournament’s four-seed, will now have to battle their way through the loser’s bracket if they want to win the conference tournament title and claim the program’s first automatic bid to the NCAA Division III National Tournament.

The Muskies would not allow NAC Player of the Year Sarah Budz (Orland Park, Ill.) to beat them, putting Budz on base three with intentional walks before finally pitching to the Stars’ slugger in the bottom of the seventh and the game in hand.

The Stars drew first blood in the game, plating two runs on an RBI single off the bat of Andrea Pinarski (Goshen, Ind.).

The Muskies pulled out in front in the top of the second, pushing across four runs on four hits and one costly Dominican error. The big hit was a two-run home run by Brittany Jurek with Megan Olson aboard.

The Stars cut the lead in half in the bottom half of the second as Kristen Look (Frankfort, Ill.) led off with a single to left. After an intentional pass to Budz, Emily Mahoney (Crystal Lake, Ill.) laid down a sacrifice bunt to move the runners up sixty feet. Pinarski then drove home her third run of the game with a sacrifice fly.

The Muskies added three more runs in each of the last three innings as the Stars’ defense committed four errors leading to nine unearned runs in the ball game for Lakeland.

Jori Cicale (Steger, Ill.) took the loss in the circle for the Stars, allowing ten runs, only four earned, on 13 hits and one walk while striking out eight over five and two-thirds innings. The Stars’ right-hander falls to 10-8 on the season.

Offensively, the Stars managed just five hits off of Lakeland’s Marissa Roover. Look, Pinarski, Mahoney, Melissa Summaria (Algonquin, Ill.) and Mary Costello (Chicago, Ill.) each logged one hit in the loss for the Stars. Pinarski went 1-for-3, driving in all three of the Stars’ runs.

Dominican will continue play in the NAC Tournament on Friday, playing the loser of the Aurora-Concordia Chicago game at 1:00 PM. With a win, the Stars would have to turn around and play at 5:00 PM on Friday evening.