Flipping the ball to Bianca Smith we started strongly again – a scoreless first inning on the back of a couple of flyballs. Bianca continue her fine form on the season and extreme dominance of recent weeks with another 4 and third innings (scattering just 2 hits) before being removed with plenty of pitch count remaining as we continued to get some game situation into our other pitching options to prepare for finals.
After the change Woodville showed great patience and scored a few late runs to tighten up the game in the closing minutes. Carly Moore started for Woodville and pitched well keeping us to 6 runs in 2 and 2/3 innings before a Veen relieved well over the last two innings.
Our top of the order placed continued pressure in the early innings – our first four hitters reaching on 7 of 8 attempts the first two times through. Good long quality at bats throughout the entire line up was pleasing to see all night.
Hits – Dunn (Jenny), Maslin (2); Prokopec, Aldwin, Lilburn, Mitton (1).
With a short break we head to Southern Districts Monday night.
We headed to the Hawk nest to face Southern Districts on a Monday night. As per usual for an afternoon match up at Souths a stiff breeze was blowing in all night ensuring anything in the air would see less reward than usual. We put a 3 spot up in the top of the first off the back of 2 walks, a FC and two hits – a double to Smith the big blow.
Prokopec got the start and shut out the Hawks in the top of the first.
We responded with four 2 out runs in the second. We hit through the line-up averaging 5 pitches an at bat that inning to keep the pressure up. After the long break we gave up two unearnt runs in the second before responding quickly to peg those two runs back in the next inning.
Souths put up three in the bottom of the inning to bring it back to 9-5 before we scored another three to push the difference past the five run maximum with light expiring. Score reverting to 9-5.
Offensively sharp up and down the line up – with regular quality at bats on display. Hits: Maslin, Smith (3); Prokopec, Aldwin, Dunn (Jacqui) 1. 8 BBs & 2 HBPs mixed in kept the pressure up all night.
Prokopec and Smith combined to throw a good game with Illburn and Maslin splitting the catching duties.
Solid win against a quality opponent – final regular season match up Friday night vs Saints at West Beach.
This was a very good standard game against another finalist.
Pitching from both teams was high quality making safe hits hard to come by. Jacqui Dunn & Kate Kim were both very good on the mound for us picking up numerous strikeouts & restricting their hitters to very few hits.
We led 5-4 when WT batted for the last time but unfortunately made a couple of wayward throws in the field which proved costly.
Lora Munro, Tracey Tuting & Deb Clark all produced key hits with runners in scoring positions.
Difficult for all teams to back up 3 days later, particularly with pitch counts & pitching depth.
In contrast to Friday this was a pretty scrappy game. Bec Saville’s first 2 innings on the mound were outstanding recording 6 outs in quick time to have us leading 6-0.
The game became pretty scrappy after that with pitchers from both teams struggling to find the strike zone.
Lora, Tracey & Deb were once again best with the bat while Sim Bradey provided a highlight sliding into home to score a much needed run.
This Friday we play H & G at home in the last game of the minor round. We will be looking for a strong performance leading into the finals.