by Bob Fromer
Surrey, British Columbia: July 2 -- It's tough to win a ball game when your entire offence over seven innings consists of two singles, two walks and a hit batter and you never get a runner beyond second base.
With those offensive statistics, it wasn't entirely surprising that the GB Women's Team dropped its first game at the Canadian Fastpitch Open Championships
tonight at Softball City, going down 4-0 to pitcher Blaire Luna and the California A's, a handpicked team of NCAA Division 1 college players put together for this and a couple of other tournaments during the summer.
The A's, who scratched out a 1-0 victory yesterday over another of the tournament's tougher teams, China Liaoning, currently top the Elite Division table with four wins and no losses. GB, China Liaoning, St Louis Extreme Elite and the host team White Rock Renegades all have only one loss, and GB will play White Rock tomorrow evening after making up a rained out game with Peru tomorrow morning.
Pitcher's duel
Most of the game was a pitcher's duel between Blaire Luna of the A's and GB's Stacie Townsend, 
and after the A's scored a run in the bottom of the second inning on two singles and a walk, the score remained at 1-0 until the A's came up to bat in the bottom of the sixth. And it might well have stayed 1-0, but with one on and one out for the A's in the sixth, an error by GB second base player Sarah Jones opened up the inning and the California team went on to score three more runs.
But even the one run would probably have been enough. Karlene Headley-Cooper drove a single to left field with two out in the top of the fourth inning and Amy Moore singled to centre with one out in the seventh, and that was it as far as GB hits were concerned, coming just a day after GB piled up 21 hits in two wins on Sunday.
Blaire Luna struck out 13 GB batters out of 21 outs, and in the only two innings when GB had two runners on base -- the sixth and seventh -- she got out of trouble with strikeouts.
Stacie Townsend had nine strikeouts of her own out of 18 California outs, but gave up six hits and, unusually, three walks.
So a bad evening at the office for the GB Team, but they will be looking for two wins tomorrow and a high position in the table before the playoffs start on Friday.
Coverage
All GB games from the Canadian Fastpitch Open and then from the Women's World Championships in Whitehorse, starting on July 13, will be reported on this website. Reports on previous games can be found by clicking "News" in the top menu on the Home Page.
GB games and all games from the World Championships will be webstreamed on www.sportscanada.tv.