UCF wasted no time rallying around Payne, making her first collegiate start against the Roadrunners in the nightcap, plating four more first-inning runs by way of two more homers off the bats of Mertes and Humphreys.<\/p>\n
The Knights\u2019 junior second baseman later added her second RBI of the evening with a third-inning RBI double, and UCF would go on to take advantage of Roadrunner defensive miscues to plate its final five runs of the contest.<\/p>\n
Payne, like Stuewe before her, seized the early momentum, spinning three hitless innings before Ball-Malone called upon Dempsey to finish the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really awesome, and we\u2019ve worked so hard,\u201d Yarnell added. \u201cWe have so many talks about bringing the energy and never letting up. It was really exciting for all of us and it shows what we can do and how hard we\u2019ve been working.\u201d<\/p>\n
UP NEXT
The Knights look to carry their early momentum into Friday night\u2019s tilt against the No. 16 Duke Blue Devils. First pitch is slated for 7 p.m. from the UCF Softball Complex and will be streamed live on ESPN+.\u00a0<\/p>\n
ABOUT UCF ATHLETICS
UCF is a proud member of the Big 12 Conference. Our mission is to positively transform the lives of our students academically, athletically, and personally through a nationally competitive intercollegiate athletics program that enhances the reputation and visibility of the University. We strive to be Florida’s preeminent athletic program, representing UCF and our community with distinction on the national stage as “Orlando’s Hometown Team”. To learn more about UCF and Athletics, please visit our websites at www.ucf.edu<\/a> and www.ucfknights.com<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UCF wasted no time rallying around Payne, making her first collegiate start against the Roadrunners in the nightcap,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,35576,35782,35784,35780,35781,13717,35783],"class_list":["post-169217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-central-florida-knights","tag-knights","tag-national-champs","tag-ucf","tag-ucf-citronauts","tag-ucf-knights","tag-university-of-central-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}