PORTLAND, Ore. – For the first time since March 2015, the Montana State University Billings softball team swept the Great Northwest Athletic Conference's Softball Players of the Week awards, as senior first baseman Brittanee Fisher and junior pitcher Alyssa Etheridge earned the conference's weekly award on Monday.
 
"Sweeping the weekly honors is no small feat, and it's exciting to see our players have early successes," MSUB softball head coach Lisa McKinney said. "We are about to head into some games against conference opponents, so it's important to continue that upward climb of success at this point in the year."
 
Both Fisher and Etheridge had big outings across the Yellowjackets' four games in Minot State's Bubble Invite II last weekend. Fisher raised her batting average to .421 on the season, went 7-for-11 at the plate seven hits, three home runs, five RBIs, six runs scored and one drawn walk. The Billings Senior alumna homered in three of the four games; after last weekend, Fisher's career home run total of 35 is tied for second in MSUB program history with Kelly Parsons.
 
"Brittanee has started seeing the ball better and making better contact at the Desert Stinger," McKinney said. "It was great to see her carry that momentum into this past weekend playing in the dome. She has looked calmer and more confident at the plate."
 
In the second game of the Bubble Invite against the host team Minot State on Saturday, Etheridge pitched a complete-game shutout, striking out seven batters – one off her career-high – and allowed only three hits and two walks. The junior from Grants Pass, Oregon got out of several jams and, with the help of the rest of the Yellowjacket defense, shut down the Beavers' aggressive base-running and small-ball approach.
 
"Alyssa has thrown some great games in her last few appearances, and it's nice to see her continue to build off each start," McKinney said. She stuck to our plan throughout the game against Minot State, and it worked well. Her energy and confidence on the mound is contagious for our team."
 
This week's award is the first for Fisher and the second for Etheridge. During her freshman year, Etheridge was named the GNAC Pitcher of the Week for throwing the first no-hitter in MSUB history against Saint Martin's on March 8, 2019. The last time MSUB swept the GNAC Player of the Week awards was on March 2, 2015, when Emily Osborn and Jessyka MacDonald swept the weekly awards after their outings at the College of Idaho/Northwest Nazarene University Classic.
 
Etheridge, Fisher and the Yellowjacket softball team will travel to Western Oregon for a four-game series starting this Saturday, Feb. 26 at 11 a.m. Livestream and live stat links can be found on the softball team's schedule page on msubsports.com.