Our team of
twelve young female athletes have been training hard since November, all along
with their sights set on our provincial championships August 8 – 10 in St.
Catherine’s. Drawing a tough first game against our rivals from Brampton, the
A’s came up short losing their first game 3-2 in a two game elimination
tournament. This meant they had a long road ahead in order to get back to medal
contention. Saturday the girls came out hard making quick work of three
competitors in a row: 15 - 0 over the Guelph Gators, 8 - 5 win against Oakville
Angels, and finally 12 - 2 over the Halton Hills Hawks. This put them in the top
six heading into Sunday competition.
In order to take home gold, the Athletics needed to win 5 games in a row on Sunday. First up was London Lightning Blue. We came out to an early 5 - 0 lead only to stumble in the 4th inning letting the Lightning team back in and taking a lead 7-5 over the A’s. Knowing they had to win to avoid being eliminated the girls fought back and won 14 - 7. Now with only four teams remaining, a win against their next opponent would guarantee the ladies a medal. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be easy as their next game would be against the only team to hand them a loss, the Brampton Blazers. The A’s came out to an early 2 - 0 lead to put the pressure on the Blazer pitchers. Piling on 3 more runs put their ace out of the game and allowed the Athletic hitters to capitalize on Brampton’s second pitcher. In the end, LaSalle got their revenge from Friday and won convincingly 9 - 2 over Brampton.
Now in the top three, LaSalle faced off against an excellent hitting team, the London Lightning Red. The team came out flat and allowed London to take an early 4 - 1 lead. Bats finally came back alive midway through the game and LaSalle took a 5 - 4 lead in the sixth. London was able to tie the game on a two out single in the bottom of the seventh to stretch the game into extra innings. In the top of the eighth, the Athletics stranded their runner at third. With two outs, runner on third, London was able to drop in a blooper to right field and win the game 6 - 5.
We are extremely pleased with accomplishing Provincial Bronze with a first year Bantam team. Looking forward to next season!