SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- The Lady Miner softball team put a lot of runs on the board on its opening weekend of play, but only came away with a split of the two games it got in during the Evangel Early Bird Classic Friday.

UMR dropped its opener 7-6 in eight innings to Oklahoma Science and Arts, the 18th-ranked team in the NAIA ranks, then held off Northwestern College of Iowa 12-11 for its first win of the year. The remaining games the Lady Miners were scheduled to play were cancelled due to the weather.

In the first game, the Lady Miners fell behind in the first inning when Morgan Thompson belted a three-run homer off starter Jen O'Hara. UMR bounced right back and tied the score in the second, with Nicole Naughton driving in one run with a double and Allison Plummer bringing home the other two with a two-run single.

UMR grabbed a 5-3 lead in the fourth when Kandi Wieberg doubled home Plummer and then scored herself later in the inning on a wild pitch. USAO cut the lead in half with a run in the bottom half of the frame, but UMR got that run back in the fifth when Ashley Winter's two-out single plated Becky Davis to make it 6-4.

The Drovers scored twice in the bottom of the seventh off reliever Ashley Wallingford to tie the game, then won it in the eighth inning on an RBI single by Kelsey MacInnes.

UMR had nine hits in the opener, with Winter getting three of them and Naughton two in their first games as Lady Miners.

Game two started out in the same fashion, as a three-run homer -- this off the bat of Tina Jacobsma -- gave Northwestern a 3-0 lead in the first.

UMR got one run back in the second on a home run by Rachel Wilkinson, then exploded for six runs in the third as it sent 11 batters to the plate.

The Lady Miners got only three hits in their six-run rally, with Wilkinson and Emily Tucker driving in a run apiece with singles and Plummer delivering a bases-loaded triple to give UMR an 7-3 lead.

UMR extended that lead to 9-3 when Kelsey Musselman scored after an error and Naughton doubled home a run. The Raiders got two runs back in the bottom half of the fourth, but UMR pushed the lead back to six with a pair of runs in the sixth inning that came home on Wieberg's two-run double.

Northwestern closed the lead to two again in the bottom of the sixth before the Lady Miners got an important insurance run in the seventh, as Naughton singled in Tucker with an unearned run. The Raiders got two runs home in the bottom half of the inning to make it 12-11 and had the tying run at second with two outs, but O'Hara struck out Michelle Van Dyun to end the game.

Four different players had two hits apiece for the Lady Miners, who had nine hits in game two.

UMR will return to Springfield next weekend to play in the Show-Me Classic that will also be hosted by Evangel.