By Bob Fromer
.jpg)
Sant Boi, Spain: 5 August – Games like this one happen very rarely, and when they do, they live long in the memory. The GB U-19 Women’s Fastpitch Team played their worst two innings of the European Junior Championships on Friday night, went 6-0 down to the Czech Republic – and still won the game.
The drama came in the Page Playoff 1 v 2 game in the main stadium at Sant Boi, and the win means that the GB Team goes directly to Saturday night’s 5.30 pm final (4.30 in the UK), which will be webstreamed live by Playo.tv on http://www.playo.tv/video/Velke-finale-2315.aspx.
The GB Team is now guaranteed at least a silver medal, their highest-ever placing at Under-19 level in Europe, but will be aiming for gold when they take on the winner of the Saturday lunchtime game between the Czechs and Italy.
Earlier on Friday, while GB was having an easy win over Belgium, the Czechs defeated Italy 8-5 to get into the 1 v 2 Page game against GB, and Italy then beat Germany 6-0 in the 3 v 4 Page game to get another shot at reaching the final. Germany are now done and will finish fourth.
GB’s amazing win, after the team had battled back from that initial deficit but entered the bottom of the seventh inning still 6-5 down, came on a walk-off blast over a drawn-in Czech outfield by Chelsea D’Avilar after Casey Moritz, Hannah Burge, Alana Snow and Megan Parno had all made crucial contributions to tie the score and load the bases with one out. Pitcher Georgina Corrick, who bats in the middle of that sequence, wasn’t allowed to contribute as the Czechs walked her intentionally -- but she had already made the win possible with a bases-loaded fly ball triple in the sixth inning that cut the deficit at that point from 6-2 to 6-5.
Georgina also recovered from a shaky start to battle through the last five innings of the game and keep the Czechs from scoring any further runs, including getting out of a bases-loaded one-out jam in the top of the sixth inning.
Shock and ecstacy are the usual emotions after a win like this, and while the players, parents, supporters and young Spanish fans – and the team has a troupe of them – were celebrating, Head Coach Amanda Murphy, as stunned as anyone else, said: “This just shows the depth and resilience of this team -- that they could come back and not give up, and were able to push through to an amazing win. I can’t say enough positive things about them!”
Pitching Coach Greg Seeley said, “It was an object lesson in how to dig yourself a huge hole – and then have the character to find a way out of it.”
Nightmare start
But it would be good to tell the story in some kind of order.
After playing well in almost every inning of the eight straight wins they had put up before this game, the GB Juniors had a nightmare start this time out, and virtually everything that could go wrong in the first two innings did so.
Georgina Corrick, not nearly as sharp at the beginning of the game as in Thursday night’s win over Italy, walked the lead-off hitter, Apolena Vyborna, in the top of the first inning, which is never a good thing to do, and the second hitter, Veronika Klimpova, singled to left field.
Georgina struck out Tereza Kubicova for the first out, but then disaster struck on Julie Coufalova’s one-hop bouncer back to the pitcher. Georgina started to go to first, then realised she could get a force out at third. Third base player Amie Hutchison may have relaxed when she saw the initial move to first, because when the throw came, it tipped off Amie’s glove and rolled into foul territory. The result was a run and eager Czech runners at second and third.
Then the GB defense panicked and compounded the situation. Megan Parno threw home on Michaela Regnerova’s ground ball to first base when there was no chance of getting an out, and though Laura Hirai dived to knock down Ema Vodickova’s ground ball heading for right field, she couldn’t recover in time to make the play.
Things might have been even worse, but GB then pulled off a double play. Natalie Kopicova struck out swinging as Ema Vodickova broke for second base. Catcher Olivia Lee fired down to second, Michaela Regnerova broke for the plate, but Laura Hirai took the throw in front of the bag and fired back home to cut the Czech runner down.
So GB trailed 3-0 after half an inning, but the respite was only brief.
After the top of the GB line-up went down in order in the bottom of the first inning, the Czechs came up again and scored another three runs on four singles, one of them a little fly ball that blooped over Georgina Corrick’s head and fell in no-man’s-land behind the circle, plus another panicky throwing error, this time by Olivia Lee on an attempted pickoff at third.
By the time that half inning ended, GB was 6-0 down, and thoughts of a mercy rule defeat were entering some people’s heads.
But the GB Team has been resilient throughout this tournament, and the players weren’t ready to give in.
The comeback begins
The comeback began with two runs in the bottom of the second inning off Czech starter Michaela Stankova, whose crow hop or “leap” delivery has generated a lot of argument about whether she is throwing an illegal pitch. She was called for it twice in the game between the two teams on Wednesday night, and it cost the Czechs a run, but tonight it was only called once and the call had no bearing on the game.
In any case, Megan Parno led off the bottom of the second inning by lashing a line drive triple that tipped off the Czech left fielder’s glove. Chelsea D’Avilar walked, Megan scored on a wild pitch, Amie Hutchison’s single up the middle sent Chelsea to third and Olivia Lee cashed the run with a sacrifice fly to centre field.
So GB had made a dent, and now the crucial question was whether the Czechs could be held in check.
Though nothing was easy for Georgina Corrick or the GB defense, the Czech offense slowly subsided and there was only one Czech baserunner from the top of the third inning through the top of the fifth.
Nothing was stirring for the GB offense either in the third and fourth innings, but in the bottom of the fifth, the game got a lot more interesting.
There were two outs and a runner on first for GB in the bottom of the fifth – nothing terribly promising – when the game turned. Hannah Burge expertly pushed a ball to the left side for an infield single, and that’s when Michaela Stankova left the game and was replaced by Kristyna Mala.
Alana Snow greeted her with a ball hit sharply back off the pitcher for an infield single, and suddenly the bases were loaded, with Georgina Corrick coming to bat and the Czech outfielders playing back about as far as they could go (Georgina had hit a ball to the fence in the third inning that was hauled in by centre fielder Natalie Kopicova).
That outfield depth was the Czechs' undoing.
After a tense at-bat and several foul balls, Georgina hit a fly ball into short right centre field that right fielder Michaela Regnerova was too deep to reach and that just eluded the dive of second base player Julie Coufalova. By the time the Czechs had retrieved the ball, all three runners had crossed the plate, the score was 6-5, Georgina was jumping up and down on third base and there was pandemonium in the stands.
The denouement
Now it was anybody’s game, and the Czechs immediately tried to snatch the momentum back in the top of the sixth.
With one out, Georgina Corrick hit Katerina Vackova with a pitch and walked Apolena Vyborna. Veronika Klimpova then lined a shot back at the pitcher that Georgina instinctively gloved but couldn’t hold and the Czechs had the bases loaded.
But Georgina struck out pinch-hitter Tereza Novotna, and the dangerous clean-up hitter, Julie Coufalova, hit a little pop fly back to the pitcher. GB had escaped and the game was still within reach. But when they came up for their final at-bat in the bottom of the seventh inning, the Czechs still led 6-5.
However, this is a GB team confident in its ability to make contact and score runs, and by this time they had seen enough of the Czech reliever, Kristyna Mala, to understand what she was trying to do to them.
In addition, Greg Seeley reminded the team as the at-bat started that if they could win the game, they could get a lie-in on Saturday morning.
After that, the seventh inning rally that won the game for GB was clinical and clean in its execution.
Casey Moritz opened the inning by lining a single to right field. Hannah Burge put down a perfect bunt to get Casey to second. Alana Snow, the author of so many clutch hits during this tournament, did it again, driving a hard ground ball up the middle that scored Casey with the tying run.
The Czechs wanted no part of Georgina Corrick, walking her intentionally, and Megan Parno then hit a vicious ground ball single into left field, hit so hard that there was no chance for Alana Snow to score. So the bases were now loaded and in came the Czech infield and outfield to cut off the winning run.
And that brought up Chelsea D’Avilar, who had looked tentative in her at-bats all night and started out looking tentative in this one, swinging at a high pitch for strike two. But then Kristyna Mala made the crucial mistake of throwing the ball more or less down the middle, and Chelsea blasted it far over the head of Czech left fielder Katerina Vackova as Alana Snow joyfully crossed the plate with the run that put GB in the final and the players mobbed Chelsea D’Avilar in the middle of the infield.
This will be only the second-ever final for a GB Fastpitch Team at a European Championship, matching the achievement of the GB Women’s Team in 2009, also in Spain, who played the Netherlands – and lost -- in the final in Valencia.
But this time, it’s the GB Team that is coming to the final undefeated, having come from behind to win all their games against the Czechs and Italy.
They will face one of them in the late afternoon tomorrow, and the gold medal will be at stake.
Photos by John Corrick