Here is my recap on Buckeye Heat 95's tourney:
First pool game: Lose 4-3 to Lasers Black in an ITB
Second pool game: Gift wrapped an inning with five or six errors and you know John's Cincy Doom team is going to make that hurt. Lost 6-3.
First Bracket: Win over WV Lady Aces in ITB
Second Bracket: Loss to Indy Blast in ITB. This was the one that really got away as we stopped them from scoring a run in one of the ITB innings and had runners on second and third with one out in the bottom half of that inning and couldn't score the runner.
Losers Bracket: Doom 96 didn't get many errors from us in this game but they didn't need it. They hit the ball hard and ran the bases well. We hit the ball so-so but stranded many runners.
A disappointing tournament in terms of wins and losses, but we never embarrassed ourselves and I think that the three ITBs show we were in the right level of competition for us. Couldn't ask for better way to get better than by playing Lasers Black and Cincy Doom twice out of the five games.
I haven't gone back to the book to actually count the number of runners that we left on base in all the games but it was WAY to many. In part because we couldn't get the bunt down to move them up. That is our players' homework assignment this week: to practice bunts and regain the form they had last summer.
And Roger, while we were an older 14U team I actually thought that cut against us. This was our first tournament together and we've only had a few weeks and one practice to filter through what HS ball did and didn't do for our players. We'll get that straightened out, adjust the line-up, and hopefully have a better shot at states for an ASA/USA berth. Looking forward to Cincy Doom tourney as a way of helping us to that goal.
BTW, I was disappointed that there weren't temporary fastpitch fences, but everyone had the same playing conditions so what are you going to do . . . .
Great tournament, just sorry that one of the Ohio teams couldn't win the berth.
