HARTSVILLE - A trio of homeruns by the No. 5 Newberry College Wolves pushed the scarlet and gray to a 6-5 upset victory over the top-seeded Carson-Newman Eagles in the winner's bracket quarterfinals of the South Atlantic Conference Softball Tournament at Byerly Park on Friday afternoon.

With the victory, Newberry advances to the winner's bracket semifinals of the tournament for the first time in program history. The Wolves are now 31-20 and will take on No. 3 Catawba in the semifinals at a time to be determined Saturday. The conference office will announce the start time later Friday. We will announce the official start time on the Newberry College athletic Twitter account (@NewberrySports).

Ashlen Ayres (Kennewick, Wash.) led the game off with a solo homerun to left field, kicking off the game in fine style with her first homerun of the season.

A hit batsman, Mallory Gerndt (Burke, Va.) single and Jeri Loffler (Weeki Wachee, Fla.) walk loaded the bases with none out and Ann Dee Priest (Douglasville, Ga.) made it a 2-0 game with a sacrifice fly to centerfield.

Carson-Newman responded with three runs in the bottom of the inning on an RBI single by Talisa Fiame and a two-run single by Kristen Toppel to make it 3-2.

Cassie Harrell (Williamston, N.C.) put the Wolves back on top in the first half of the second inning, as the senior blasted a two-run homer - her second of the tournament and fourth of the season - to make it a 4-3 Newberry advantage.

Hailey Drawe (Oceanside, Calif.) added to the Wolves' lead with a two-run homer of her own in the top of the third inning, which was just her second round-tripper of the season, putting the Wolves up by a 6-3 lead.

Carson-Newman cut into the lead in the bottom of the third inning when Elayna Siebert led off with a solo homer to narrow the Wolves' to 6-4. Brooke Ramsey put the Eagles within one run in the bottom of the fifth with her own sacrifice fly.

Brittany Middleton (Lizella, Ga.) was efficient in her five innings of work in the circle, allowing five runs on six hits to even her season record to 8-8. But it was the two innings of work from Maude McCourry (Centreville, Md.) that closed out the game, as the junior picked up her first save.

McCourry sat the Eagles down in order in the sixth, then walked the leadoff batter in the seventh before striking out two batters and inducing a game-ending groundout to send the Wolves to Saturday action for the first time since 2006.

McCourry's two seventh inning strikeouts were Newberry's first strikeouts from the circle in the tournament. Drawe was the only Newberry player with multiple hits, going 2-for-4 in the game with a pair of RBIs. Harrell's two-run bomb marked to only other multi-RBI game for Newberry.