Bracket play continued across Orange County on Friday ahead of Saturday’s 14U and 12U Platinum Championship games and then Sunday’s Premier title games which will see the 10U Championship game at 9 am PST; 12U at 12:30 pm and 14U at 4 pm.
Today’s action saw the finalists decided for the Winner’s bracket and at 14U the two games to decide the A and B brackets were well played games with excellent pitching and impressive home runs.
Here’s a look at each of the 14U bracket champions and how they advanced to play on Saturday…
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In the 14U Bracket A match-up, Georgia Impact – Sampson played Sorcerer – Bigley/Everett and the Impact got on the board first with an RBI single by Alyssa Willer in the top of the 3rd inning and then stretched the lead to 2-0 on an Audrey Vandagriff home run in the top of the 6th inning.
Sorcerer cut the lead in half in the bottom of the 6th on an Emma Guiterrez solo home run and Ryan Bigley’s team would get the tying run to third in the bottom of the 7th but pitcher Morgan Reimer came in to strike out two of three batters in the inning to preserve the win.
Morgan is, in my opinion, the breakout player of the 14U play this week at PGF. She’s an excellent pitcher with a strong riseball who is from British Columbia, Canada and has only been with the Impact for a few weeks but is dazzling good.
All the pitchers for the Impact are tough and tonight the strong trio of Bailey Kenziorski, who started and went 5.2 innings with just two hits with strikeouts; Ava Hodges, who came in the 6th inning and game up a hit but got a big out as well and Reimer, who closed out the game, were outstanding.
Here’s Morgan getting the last out via the strikeout:
I called them the “BAM” squad as an acronym of their first names Bailey, Ava and Morgan. It might not be the catchiest nickname ever, but it helped me remember their names!
Here’s a video interview of the trio after the game:
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In the other Winner’s bracket matchup, the So Cal Athletics – Terrones/Briggs team played the California Grapettes from Northern California in a battle representing the Golden State.
You have to give Head Coach Moose McNair and his team from the North credit. They are now 87-17-4 for the summer and have won five PGF tourneys to get this far.
The pitching of Thomara Drummer, who is called “T” by her teammates, was impressive as she scattered five hits over seven innings and was comfortably ahead 3-0 going into the top of the 6th thanks to a two-RBI single by Elysia Duarte to cap a three run fifth inning for the Grapettes.
The Athletics didn’t give up, however, and scored a run in the 6th and another in the top of the 7th on a strong home run by Callie Fitzpatrick to make the score 3-2 but that was it as Drummer closed out the inning for the win.
Check out this clip of the final play of the game, a fly out that kicked off the celebration as the Grapettes move on to play Saturday at 12:30 pm with the opponent to be decided in the morning.
Here’s also an interview with Drummer, Coach McNair and Kelsey McNair, who has also been strong all week:
*** Scroll down to read more from Friday’s PGF as we started the day following 12U action at Fountain Valley before heading to Huntington Beach to watch a lot of excellent 14U player there…
