As I mentioned yesterday, my oldest nieces have been spending the first part of their summer on the softball field. While this isn't a new experience for them, it is the first time that they both have different perspectives of the game. Like I said, my oldest niece is now helping to coach a travel team and after a few bumps early on, they had a pretty amazing end to their season.
On the flip side, her younger sister was playing her first year of travel ball after graduating high school. They scraped together a misfit band of players to form a team called the Scarlet Hawks. Okay, not really a bunch of misfits, they are actually a group of really great young ladies, but unlike other teams that have been together for years with the same players, this was kind of a piecemeal team.
I've mentioned it before, but university coaches usually encourage players to play on a summer league team so they can say fresh and conditioned once practices and play starts back up in the fall. This might be isolated to softball, as some other sports don't want players doing anything to jeopardize their health in the off season.
Two weeks ago, the Scarlet Hawks had a pretty amazing run taking the B tier championship in their bracket play games. It all started on Friday the 10th when they took down one of the Tennessee Mojo teams 6 to 2, then they moved on to their second Friday game and beat Summit City Select 2 to 0.
Pool play continued on Saturday the 11th with them taking down a Sting team 7 to 5, then suffering a loss against a Central Ohio Pride team 1 to 7.
This set them up for bracket play on Sunday as either the first or second seed in their bracket. They won their first game 6 to 1 against an NWO Lady Buckeyes team, then cruised through their second game 14 to 2 against an Ohio Hawks team. Finally, they clinched a nice 3 to 1 win against the Ohio Warriors to take the title. I asked my niece if she got any hardware for the win and she said they got these little dinky medals. Which is too bad. I know a couple of years ago they were giving out these superbowl style rings to the winners.
Last weekend they were back in action for their final tournament of the season. The started off with a couple of tough losses 4 to 5 against Fort Wayne Force, and 4 to 6 against LoCo Aftershock. However, they bounced back for their late game on Saturday beating Strikezone Fillies with a 6 to 0 shut out. Sunday was another deep day for them in bracket play beating NWO Lady Buckeyes 8 to 1 then hammering Ohio Stealth 16 to 7. They then had another close win against STL Illusions 9 to 7 before falling to Finesse 3 to 7.
To be fair, four games is a long day for these ladies. While it isn't uncommon to play that many games in high school or high school level travel ball, once you make it to university, you never play more than two or three games in a single day usually. The fact that some teams could play six or seven games in one day to win the championship is both impressive and insane.
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