By Melinda Daniels and Neil Teague
Thursday 3 August – The GB Under-18 Women’s Team came from behind, then hung on in a tense game with Ukraine on Thursday morning at the European Under-18 Women Championship in Prague, and the win sent the GB Team forward into a final round-robin featuring the top six teams.
An explanation of how this round-robin, Group X, will work is at the end of this story, but the point is that the crucial win over Ukraine gives the GB Team a good chance to play in a medal game on Saturday.
This is important, because the three medal-winning teams at this tournament will qualify for next year’s WBSC Under-18 Women’s World Championship Group Stage tournaments.
Early deficit
Both teams failed to score in the first inning, as Elena Clark-Wilson took to the circle for GB, facing Ukraine’s Rymma Boiko.
Ukraine then took a 2-0 lead in the top of the second inning on four singles, and it might have been more if catcher Cara Edwards hadn’t thrown out a Ukraine runner trying to steal second.
But GB answered quickly in the bottom of the second inning. Jenna Thompson reached on a single and scored on a double to left field by Aliyah Clarke.
Jessica Chan then drove a ball to left centre field that the Ukranian outfielder couldn’t quite catch, scoring Clarke. A single through the left side by Kaitlyn Parisi brought Jessica in to give GB a 3-2 lead.
Tension
Over the next two-and-a-half innings, neither team scored, but it was Ukraine that was putting runners on base while GB was going down in order.
But in the bottom of the fifth inning, GB stretched their lead to 4-2.
Jessica Chan opened the inning with a triple to centre field, and scored on Kaitlyn Parisi’s slap groundout to second base.
Ukraine wiped out that slight GB cushion in the top of the sixth inning.
After Viktoriia Bezlatnia led off with a triple and Valeriia Oliinik walked, Saige Sampson came in to pitch for GB, and the British team quickly recorded three outs – one of them via a successful rundown. But in the midst of all that, Bezlatnia scored on a groundout to pull the score back to 4-3.
Insurance run
GB power quickly restored their two-run lead in the bottom of the sixth inning.
Molly Blackwood tripled on a blistering line drive to center field to lead off the inning and was brought home by Jenna Thompson’s sacrifice fly to deep center field.
It was still tense in the top of the seventh inning, especially after Anna Novak reached on an infield single for Ukraine with one out, bringing the typing run to the plate. But Saige Sampson induced two infield ground balls that the GB defense converted to outs, and the GB Under-18s had a very precious win.
Scores and standings
The round-robin groups for the top eight teams at the European Under-18 Women’s Championship, Groups E and F, finished play on Thursday morning, with three teams from each group going forward to the final Championship round-robin, Group X, which started on Thursday afternoon.
GB was in Group E along with Czechia, France, and Ukraine. Group F consisted of Italy, the Netherlands, Israel, and Ireland.
Scores on Thursday morning were:
GROUP E
GB 5, Ukraine 3
Czechia 18, France 3
GROUP F
Netherlands 7, Ireland 0
Italy 8, Israel 1
Final standings in Groups E and F were:
GROUP E
Czechia (3-0)
GB (2-1)
Ukraine (1-2)
France (0-3)
GROUP F
Italy (3-0)
Netherlands (2-1)
Ireland (1-2)
Israel (0-3)
Group X
The three teams that have moved forward from Groups E and F – Czechia, GB, Ukraine, Italy, the Netherlands and Ireland – will now make up Group X.
These teams will play a full round-robin – except that results against teams in your own group (E or F) will be carried forward as played games, and you only play real games against the three teams from the other group.
So GB will carry a 1-1 record into Group X by virtue of their win against Ukraine and their loss to Czechia, and they will play the Netherlands (1-1) at 7.15 pm on Thursday evening, Ireland (0-2) at 9.00 am on Friday and Italy (2-0) at 6.00 pm on Friday. GB’s win against France on Wednesday morning doesn’t count because France didn’t make it through to Group X.
Based on the final Group X standings, the teams that finish in the top two places will play for the gold medal on Saturday, and the teams that finish third and fourth will play for the bronze medal.
While Groups E and F have been fighting for places in Group X, the other 12 teams in the tournament have been playing for places 9-20 in the final standings. All results from these games can be followed on the WBSC Europe website.
