The Alden-Conger softball team dropped its eighth consecutive game Tuesday and things didn’t get better Thursday against Martin Luther/Granada-Huntley-East Chain in Alden.

ML/GHEC’s Bethany Flohrs struck out 14 batters and ML/GHEC scored three runs in the top of the second and fourth innings to win 7-1 against Alden-Conger.

Flohrs allowed four hits and one earned run in seven innings for ML/GHEC.

Knights’ freshman pitcher Ali Songstad took the loss as she allowed 15 hits and had trouble finding the strike zone on a windy day. Songstad walked nine ML/GHEC batters and struck out four.

“She was definitely off,” said Alden-Conger head coach Gary Nelson. “She doesn’t walk that many in a game usually.”

The Knights couldn’t bail her out with two outs in the inning on two separate occasions.

Alden-Conger allowed six runs to score in the second and fourth innings and all six runs came when the Knights had two outs.

“A lot of it was walking — too many walks,” Nelson said in reference to letting six runs score with two outs. “We just can’t have those walks and put that pressure on us. We just wither it seems like.”

That pressure showed in the top of the fourth inning. ML/GHEC held a 3-0 when Alden-Conger’s first baseman mishandled a throw that eventually allowed three runs to score for ML/GHEC.

“Once we start making errors it just seems to go contagious and everybody makes an error,” Nelson said.

Alden-Conger got on the board in the fourth inning as Emily Bremseth hit an RBI single that scored Nikki Schultz to make it a 6-1 game.

Nelson noted while Thursday night’s performance was good, he thinks his team can do better down the stretch.

“We did better tonight,” Nelson said. “This is a good team, but we have to do better than this.”

ML/GHEC 7, Alden-Conger 1

ML/GHEC 030 300 1 — 7 15 1

Alden-Conger 000 100 0 — 1 4 3

WP— Bethany Flohrs 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 14 K

LP— Ali Songstad 7 IP, 15 H, 7 R, 3 ER, 9 BB, 4 K