ST. LOUIS, Mo. – The Drake University softball team swept the Missouri Valley Conference weekly awards, the MVC office announced Monday, May 7. Freshman Macy Johnson (Winterset, Iowa) has been selected the MVC Newcomer and Player of the Week while redshirt junior Nicole Newman (Madison, Wis.) is the MVC Pitcher of the Week. These are the first career MVC weekly awards for Johnson and a league-best eighth time Newman has been named MVC Pitcher of the Week this season and the 13^th time in her outstanding career.
 
Johnson had a great series against Missouri State in helping Drake take three wins over the Bears. She batted a team-high .556 (5-for-9) with one walk and team-high five runs batted in. Johnson started the series with a 3-for-3 game along with a driving in a career-high four RBI. She drove in two runs with a single in the second inning and then later in the sixth inning added two more insurance runs with a single to center field. In the second game, Johnson tied the game at 3-3 with a fifth-inning RBI single. In her first season, Johnson is second in batting on the team at .344 along with swiping a team-best 19 stolen bases.
 
Newman continues her impressive comeback season as she earned two of the three wins over Missouri State. In two appearances against the Bears, Newman went 2-0 with a 0.81 earned run average in 8.2 innings of work with 12 strikeouts. She started the series with a complete game where she allowed two runs (one earned) on six hits with eight strikeouts. Newman then pitched 1.2 innings of relief in the series finale and struck out four. This season, Newman is 19-3 with a league-best 0.64 ERA with 213 strikeouts. This past weekend, she moved to No. 1 all-time at Drake and No. 7 in MVC history in career strikeouts with 768.
 
Drake is the No. 1 seed for the MVC Championship this week at Buel Field. The Bulldogs will open the tournament Friday in the first semifinal matchup at 4 p.m. Every game of the MVC Championship will be on ESPN+.