Surrey, British Columbia, Canada: June 29 -- The GB Women's Fastpitch Team has now had two intense days of training plus a scrimmage game win last night over Peru. Tonight, in a final warm-up game before play begins in earnest in the Elite Division at the Canadian Open Fastpitch Championships, the GB Team drew 1-1 in a fine game against the California A's, a top travel ball team consisting of college players from NCAA Division 1 schools.
The Canadian Open always attracts plenty of spectators, even for scrimmage games, and there was warm appreciation from a small crowd on the main diamond at Softball City for a tense and entertaining game of high-level softball.
GB pitcher Stacie Townsend, working hard to get herself into game shape for this tournament and the World Championships to come, started again after pitching the first four innings last night against Peru. The California A's were a far more testing proposition, but Stacie pitched five scoreless innings, giving up only two hits, walking one, striking out eight, and working out of tough situations in both the second and third innings. Stacie has yet to give up a run in her first nine innings of work.
Taking the lead
Meanwhile, the A's, also working towards the competition to come, threw four
different pitchers over the course of the seven innings, and GB finally squeezed out a 1-0 lead against the third of them, Erin Wesley, in the fifth inning.
Jessica Legendre led off the inning with a walk, moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Karlene Headley-Cooper, took third on an infield single by GB newcomer Amy Moore and scored when Wesley uncorked a wild pitch with Steph Pearce in the batter's box.
Even though there was already one out, the GB coaching staff then called for another sacrifice bunt, which Steph Pearce executed successfully, to move Amy Moore to third and make the A's pitcher think about how the opening run of the game had scored. But GB Junior player Sara Robb, starting her first game for the senior team, grounded out to short to end the inning.
A tense conclusion
Carling Hare came in to pitch for GB in the sixth inning, and another GB Junior player, Amy Wells, made her first senior appearance, taking over for Jessica Legendre at shortstop.
And the gods of softball decreed that of course the first ball put into play would be hit to Amy, and it was a high infield chop off the bat of lightning-fast California A's leadoff hitter Ashley Carter. Amy did all she could, but Carter beat out a good throw to first. The A's sacrificed her to second, and then the GB defense preserved the lead. Leah English, normally the GB catcher but playing first base in this game, made a sensational catch of a line drive low to her left to take a hit away from Kelsey Arnold, and then Sara Robb, in left field, made a good running catch of a ball hit towards the gap by clean-up hitter Melissa Davin.
So GB still had a 1-0 lead as the A's came up in
the bottom of the seventh inning. But Carling Hare made the fatal mistake of walking the leadoff hitter and compounded it by walking the next batter as well. A sacrifice bunt later, the A's had the tying run on third and the winning run on second with only one out. And following yet another walk to load the bases, and then a sharp single to right field by Jena Rubio, the game was tied, the bases were still loaded, and GB still had two outs to find..
But Carling Hare and the GB defense kept their nerve. A sharp ground ball down the third base line by Ashley Carterwas snared by Kristi Yoshizawa, who threw home for the force out. And then Carling induced Kaylee Lahmers to pop out to second base to end the inning.
With another scrimmage game to come on the same field, and with both coaches having plenty of positives to take from the game, the teams decided to settle for an honourable draw.
Canadian Open Notes
The weather forecast called for rain all day today in the Vancouver area, but though there was plenty of cloud and wind early on, rain came there none. By mid-afternoon, the sun was out and the GB-California A's game, starting at 6.30 pm, was played in ideal conditions.
Meanwhile, with play due to start tomorrow in an
event featuring five divisions, 16 top women's teams and 58 youth teams at U-19 and U-16 levels, the excitement is mounting on site. All kinds of vendors are setting up stalls, signs and fences are being erected, licks of paint applied and crowds of volunteers gathering.
The GB Women have been assigned a bat girl named Rachel, who plays for a local youth team. And Rachel looked strangely familiar -- because she was the bat girl for the GB Under-19 Team when they played here last summer in the Futures Gold Tournament. Except that Rachel must have grown six inches in the past year! "Yeah, I guess I've grown a bit," Rachel said.
The GB Women will play their opening game in the Elite Division tomorrow (June 30) at 1.00 pm on the main diamond at Softball City against Peru. Since the GB Team beat the Peruvians 8-0 on Thursday night in a scrimmage game, GB will expect to get off to a winning start. But after that the competition will get tougher, and GB could wind up playing anything between nine and thirteen games before the competition ends on July 8. It should all be ideal preparation for the World Championships that begin in Whitehorse on July 13 -- as long as GB players can stay healthy under a heavy workload.