First Tournament

The Sandy Plains Fire 2000 team played their first tournament together this past weekend. The tournament was held at Al Bishop Park in Marietta and there were seventeen 12U teams entered. The first two games were pool games which are simply used to rank the teams.

The first game was against the GA Fire team who are one of the stronger teams around as they have been playing together for several years (they eventually won the entire tournament). Maura started pitching the game and did very well through the first inning. Our leadoff batter, Morgan, reached base and managed to steal home on a nice double steal. After the first inning the SP Fire was down 2-1. The second inning was when the GA Fire found a glaring weakness in our defense. They started to bunt the ball down the first base line. The defense was unable to stop them. After pitching through the lineup, Maura was replaced by Bailey. She didn’t have much better luck with the bunts either. The final score was 10-1.

Coach Paul and I were attempting to keep score using an iPad app developed by ESPN. It was extremelly complicated and difficult to keep track of during game action. So, unfortunately I was unable to get any stats for this game.

The second game went much better. The opponent was the GA Combat. Bailey pitched the best game of her short pitching career. She threw three innings and faced 10 batters. The score card to the left is from the game. She struck out 4 of the ten batters, caught a fly ball and assisted in two putouts. She threw over 60% strikes and really shut the other team down. The SP Fire was up 2-0 when she left the game. Maura had a little bit of bad luck with the defense and gave up two runs to tie the game. We were the home team and we managed to score the winning run in the bottom of the fourth innning.

With a 1-1 record through the two pool games with a negative 8 run differential put the SP Fire in the number three position in the silver bracket. Unfortunately this meant a game immediately after the win over the GA Combat. The opponent was the GA Jinx. The girls on the Jinx looked much older, taller, and stronger than our team. Bailey started pitching the game and was not of the same form as the first game. She walked the first batter who eventually came around to score on a wild pitch. After a couple more hits and another walk the bases were loaded. The SP Fire made a nice force out at home to save a run and an un-assisted double play by Maura ended the inning but not before the Jinx had scored four runs. The second inning of pitching didn’t go well for Bailey either. She managed to get only two strikouts of the game and a ground out but gave up three runs. Maura came in during the third inning and had a 1-2-3 inning. In the fourth inning she got the first two outs, but four straight hits scored three runs. The final score was 10-2.