Moss Bluff Tournament Taking a recreation team to an All-Star and Tournament team tourney almost seems suicidal but the SweetHearts took their best efforts to see how they stack up against the top teams. At moments they held their own. At the plate they were fearless and other times they were down-right comical. There were times they looked like the teams they had beat up on in league and sometimes they looked like they could beat much better teams. Saturday they camped out at the park and developed even better friendships and gelled as an even stronger team. The games were very shortened for tournament play - pool games 45-50 minutes, bracket games an hour and 10 minutes. League games were an hour and a half. Below are the short stories of each game.
Game one - LA Express (pool): Our first game playing top-notch tournament players was an eye opener. The LA Express nailed Taylor right off for six runs before the team managed to get three outs. By the time we got to the plate we were shell-shocked. and managed three strikeouts in the first four batters leaving Leah stranded at third. The 'Hearts put Tracy in to pitch and the Express had trouble hitting her 'off speed pitch' on every pitch. They began to get walks instead of hits. However Blanche had problems catching Tracy's pitches allowing the Express to steal bases at will. When it was all over Tracy fared no better than Taylor giving up six more runs. In our half of the second Blanche managed to get on with a single, stole around to third. Taylor got a walk and the game was called since it was just pool play - game time of 50 minutes.
Game two - Lady Bandits (pool): 50 minute games give you no chance to play all your players and there's no chance to catch up if you get behind. There is simply no time to catch up. We managed to make it thru the order (11 players) It took three scoreless innings of nothing but a few walks but we could do nothing better. The Bandits hit us hard in the first getting six runs to set the pace. They looked unbeatable from our prospective. Their two runs in the second were just inning on the cake. Suddenly the team that had scored 68 runs in their last three league games had managed just one run in the pool part of the tournament.
Game three - LA Fear (bracket): Our first elimination game was against the LA Fear. After just one inning we felt confident that here was a team we could play against. They managed just two runs and our defense looked pretty good. On offense we managed to get runners on and load the bases but never get anyone across. It's not because we didn't have the chances. It was because Fear was that good. But we liked what we saw. In the second our fielding fell apart as we gave up five runs on really bad throwing errors. We looked like the recreation teams we had been playing all season. In our half of the inning we did string together enough hits to produce two runs. The team still held on to hope as the pitcher for Fear was the Hackberry pitcher - a girl we had beaten two during the season. Instead of making the game close we let it slip even farther away as we gave the Fear another six runs on bad fielding and poor play. In the bottom half we managed three runs but were no real threat. The highlight of the game was Terrah's "trip/stumble/fall/and worm" her way in a steal of third. Without her height she wouldn't have made the 'touch' of the bag at third. Great second and third effort.
Game four - Lady Bandits (losers bracket): With hope shining in their eyes, the 'Hearts headed out to play their Sunday morning game however, three up and three down changed the feeling very quickly. Taylor kept the team in the game by limiting the Bandits to just three runs in their half of the first. There was hope yet. It the second the SweetHearts went down in just three strike outs. The Bandits then had a field day as the 'Hearts missed several routine infield grounders that got thru to the outfield. Several big hits chased Taylor from the mound after giving up seven more runs. Leah came in to close out the inning. In the third the 'Hearts went quietly in just three more batter. The Bandit pitcher pitched a shutout getting six strike outs in the process. Then they added two more runs to take the game by 'run-rule'. Afterwards the SweetHearts went quietly home from their first experience with softball at a much higher level than recreation.
for Box Score Click Here Life at the Moss Bluff Tournament
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