Round 10 rolls around and we face a familiar foe in Southern Districts who we played in Round 1. After playing them previously and spending some time around some of their ladies in the recent all star game we had a greater level of familiarity about them this time round.
Bianca Smith (fresh off a dominant complete game no hitter last time out against Henley & Grange) started off the match with a battle against Sarah Short. After fouling off a few tough pitchers Sarah put an end to any no hit watching early reaching on a double to left. Bianca settled down after that and whilst Short ultimately scored later in the inning a strikeout ended the threat.
Offensively we jumped out of the gate strongly. Whilst Souths managed to retire our lead off hitter, we proceeded to go walk, single, single, single, error, single, walk, walk and we’d put a five spot on the board. Prokopec, Dunn, McMahon and Harris with hard hit singles.
Smith dialled up the strike out in the second, after a lead off walk she struck out the next two before retiring the third out on a ground out to third.
Keeping the pressure up offensively we struck for another 5 run inning. A walk, missed played flyball, hit by pitch before consecutive hits to Dunn & McMahon. JoJo and Fiona both took their second walks on the day as part of the strong inning.
Smith started the inning struggling with a moving strike zone and showed her ability to work through adversity – giving up only the one run despite having loaded bases with none out.
Sarah Short settled into her stint on the mound in the third and worked around a one out error to retire the side without threat.
We stretched Smith out an inning further than planned as Prokopec was stuck on the bases unable to warm up before the fourth. After pitching to the first two hitters Smith took over in left field after another great outing. Once warm Prokopec took care of business with a strike out and a nicely turned 6-4-3 double play by our first time pivot combination of Dunn & Aldwin.
We managed to add one to our total before time expired in the last – Parker reaching on a walk and scoring on Dillon’s RBI single.
Solid game all round – defensively keeping the scorers red pen at bay and rewarding our pitchers for their hard work. Big game next week against another likely finals participant – away at Woodville. Hope to see a nice GBC crowd in attendance.
The Div 2 girls have managed to keep a hold on their undefeated title after a tough game at home against Southern Districts. The game started off with Alex on the mound and Sarah behind the dish, and the rest of the Tigers backing them 100%.
Souths fought hard and were right in it the whole way through the game. Defensively, we made some mistakes chasing runners, which made the game a lot harder than it needed to be. We saw some impressive fielding, with a few great catches from Shona on second, and Del solid the whole time on first - earning her Best on Ground! Emily took over from Alex in the fourth and pitched her best game this year.
The final batting inning saw the Tigers needing 3 runs to win! We managed to score one and get two more on to base, but still needed that final hit to get us home and time was not our friend. Alex was our final batter for the night and had some solid swings but couldn’t quite connect. It wasn’t until the final play of the game that she managed to make solid connection and hit it past the infield, making it onto first and getting two home to win the game!
