GREENVILLE, N.C.—Senior shortstop Megan Kern (Royersford, Pa.) hit two home runs and junior first baseman Victoria Sebastian (Ridgewood, N.J.) connected on a two-run shot for her first homer of the year as Villanova (6-7) powered past Gardner-Webb (6-7) for an 8-6 victory at Max R. Joyner Family Stadium in the Pirate Invitational on Saturday morning. Kern recorded her first career multi-homer game and the 32^nd such game in school history, then continued her torrid streak later in the day when she hit a game-winning two-run shot in the top of the seventh inning to lift the Wildcats past Fairleigh Dickinson in a 3-1 win.
 
For the second straight game Villanova got its offense rolling early with two runs in each of the first two innings. Graduate second baseman Angela Giampolo (East Windsor, N.J.) was hit by a pitch leading off the game and Kern homered two batters later to give the Wildcats an instant 2-0 lead. In the second inning, junior left fielder Dani Dabroski (Cedar Grove, N.J.) hit a sacrifice fly and Giampolo later scored when she and graduate designated player Paige Rauch (Windsor, N.Y.) successfully executed a double steal of second and home.
 
The game had a far different feel from the first meeting of the weekend between the teams when the Wildcats scored the only run of the game in the bottom of the seventh inning for a walk-off, 1-0 victory. In Saturday's game the Bulldogs were playing catch-up for the entire game but never came all the way back from early deficits of 4-0 and 5-2 in the first three innings.
 
Gardner-Webb got on the board in the home half of the second inning with two unearned runs against senior starting pitcher Sara Kennedy (Newtown, Conn.), who pitched effectively for four innings and earned her first win of the year. Kennedy (1-3, 5.69 ERA) allowed a two-run double to leadoff hitter Abbey Goodrum with two outs in the bottom of the fourth which pulled the Bulldogs to within 5-4, but she got Araceli Pesqueira to groundout for the third out.
 
Villanova got both runs back in the fifth inning when junior catcher Ally Jones (Brielle, N.J.) led off with a single and Sebastian crushed an 0-1 pitch over the fence in left-center for her second career home run. Kern hit her second long ball of the day to right field with one out in the sixth inning to extend the Wildcats lead to 8-4 and put the game nearly out of reach. Gardner-Webb scored its final two runs in the bottom of the sixth inning before freshman reliever Kelsey White (Taunton, Mass.) stranded a runner in scoring position and went on to retire the side in order in the bottom of the seventh to close out the game.
 
It was the second straight day that Kennedy and White combined to pitch Villanova to a win. In the Wildcats second game on Friday against tournament host East Carolina, White started and pitched 6 2/3 innings before Kennedy came in with the bases loaded to retire the final batter of the game and earn the save. They swapped places on Saturday, with Kennedy scattering four hits over four innings pitched and White going the final three frames for the save.
 
Giampolo, Kern and Jones had two hits apiece for Villanova, which doubled up the Bulldogs by a 10-5 count in the hits column. Jones had the previous multi-homer game for the Wildcats when she hit two home runs at Seton Hall on May 3 of last season. Kern is the 22^nd batter to have a multi-homer game in Villanova history.