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Sunday action in Weekend 2 of the Athletes Unlimited softball season saw one blowout with big bookend scoring in the first and last innings of the early contents and an exciting comeback one-run victory in the later game.
Here are recaps of the games done by Bruce Miles for Athletes Unlimited and photos courtesy of Jade Hewitt Media.
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Game 9: Team Hayward capitalizes in first and seventh innings for 13-5 victory
Team Hayward put up a tidy pair of bookends to their 13-5 victory Sunday over Team Show on a day when all of Athletes Unlimited’s scoring machinations were in full force.
Hayward’s Blue team scored five runs in the first inning and six in the seventh, sending 11 batters in each inning.
The victory was the first of the weekend for Team Hayward while Team Show fell to 0-2.
“Bookending was important,” said Hannah Flippen, who went 3-for-5 with a home run, three RBI and a walk to take home MVP 1 honors and 60 extra points to go along with her 70 stat points and 80 win points. “Being the visiting team is really hard. To get ahead early in the game is really important and then putting the knife in the back and twisting it, finishing it off and not let off the gas pedal and just getting after it in the seventh inning.”
As you might expect from the score, many players had good offensive days for Team Hayward, which piled up 16 hits to 11 for Team Show. Captain Victoria Hayward was the second MVP, earning 190 total points, and Morgan Howe was MVP 3 with a pair of doubles, a single and four RBI.
Howe continued her slugging prowess. On Saturday, she homered over the 36-foot-high scoreboard in right-center field.
Asked if she got the ball back, she smiled and pointed to teammate Flippen.
“Flip over there, she handed me the ball back today, actually,” Howe said. “I feel really great at the plate. It’s kind of funny. I’m kind of shocked at myself. A lot of us haven’t seen live pitching, real pitching, in months, almost a year. So I’m kind of shocked at myself if I’m being honest. I’m seeing the ball really great right now. I’m seeing spin. I’m seeing movement. Sure. Run with it.”
Teammate Nerissa Myers reached base all five times up. She singled, doubled and walked three times, picking up 20 individual points for the double and 10 each for the other plate appearances.
“Honestly, I just think I’m a super patient hitter,” Myers said. “I know the people in front of me and behind me are going to do their jobs so that helps me to be able to see a little more pitches. I’m also super comfortable with a two-strike approach. So I’m like, ‘Just trust it, look for your pitch, not so much what they’re throwing. Sit on what you want, and it will come to you.’
“If I don’t get that, then a walk here we come.”
After the first inning, Team Show kept chipping away with single runs in the second, third and fourth innings and two more in the fifth, allowing them to creep within 7-5 after five innings.
With Athletes Unlimited awarding teams points for winning innings, Team Show was able to score 40 points that way before Team Hayward finally broke it open.
In other words, there are numerous ways to score points and help your team.
“It’s really cool; it’s different,” Myers said. “It makes you think about the little things that you’ve always had to do every day. Then you actually get to see how it pans out in a game with the points system. So I think that’s really cool.”
For Team Show, Taylor Edwards had a big day with a double, a homer and a walk, picking up 70 individual points in addition to the 40 innings points won by her team.
Danielle O’Toole earned the win with five innings of seven-hit, two-run ball. Show took the loss, giving up 10 hits and 11 runs (9 earned) in 1.2 innings.
Here are the Game 9 video highlights:
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Game 10: Haylie McCleney’s RBI double helps Team Osterman in 5-4 win over Team Ocasio
If she had her druthers, Cat Osterman probably wouldn’t have made coming in to pitch yet another day to be her top priority.
But a captain’s gotta do what a captain’s gotta do.
So it was Sunday in the second game of Athletes Unlimited’s doubleheader at Parkway Bank Sports Complex in Rosemont.
Osterman, Captain of the Gold Team, started and worked six inning in Saturday’s 5-2 victory over Team Hayward. But after watching a tough Team Ocasio squad claw back from a 2-0 deficit and be in the midst of a four-run rally in the bottom of the fourth Sunday against Randi Hennigan and Karissa Hovinga, Osterman took matters into her own left hand and put out the fire.
She recorded three outs to minimize the damage and allowed only two hits and no runs over four innings, striking out six and walking one. Her teammates then rallied for three in the top of the sixth for a 5-4 victory to move them to 2-0 this weekend. Team Ocasio dropped to 1-1 as the holiday weekend wraps up Monday with a pair of games.
Osterman is now 4-0 in Athletes Unlimited play over the first two weekends of the inaugural season.
“I was hoping I’d only be needed for one, maybe two, innings,” she said. “I knew that when we lost JB (Jessica Burroughs, who is unavailable) from our roster earlier this week that we were going to have to put the pieces together to get three wins. Right now I’m willing to do whatever it takes to help everybody win, and that’s what we needed. I figured it we kept it close, I knew with our lineup we had a chance to be able to come back and win.
“Thankfully, I was able to do my job and give our offense some time to get some momentum and some runs in.”
That’s exactly what happened.
Osterman’s team scored a run in each of the first and third innings, with Sahvanna Jacquish hitting a two-out homer in the third. Team Ocasio made its comeback in the fourth against Hennigan and Hovinga before Osterman put herself in. Jessica Warren and pinch hitter Nadia Taylor had doubles in the inning for Team Ocasio. In came Osterman, and she got Anissa Urtez on a sac bunt before striking out Jazmyn Jackson and pinch hitter Jordan Roberts.
That settled things down, and Team Osterman got three in the sixth on a solo homer by DJ Sanders and a two-run double by Haylie McCleney.
MVP 1 honors and 60 extra points went to McCleney, who wound up with 200 for the game. Osterman was MVP 2, and that pushed her past 1,000 (to 1,004) for the entire competition. Jaquish added 20 points for MVP 3 honors, giving her 190 for the game.
McCleney gave the credit to Osterman for shutting the door.
“It gave us a great lift,” McCleney said. “Randi did one heck of a job giving us the innings she gave us. We knew it was going to be a pitch-by-committee today. And Cat coming in and shutting the door like that really gives us confidence as hitters. She’s going to shut it down in the circle. We just need to do our job, manufacture runs and try to piece together good at-bats, and that’s what we did.”
Captain Aleshia Ocasio started in the circle and pitched four innings, giving up one earned run.
For Monday night’s weekend finale against Team Show, don’t be surprised to see the Cat prowling in the circle again.
“Right now the plan is that I’ll start and go as long as I can,” Osterman said. “I gotta do what I gotta do.for us to get some W’s. But I know Randi’s (Hennigan) ready to get in some innings again, and I know Hov (Hovinga) will be ready. If we need to use them, we will. Hopefully we’ll get some runs and it’ll make a decision to put someone else in a little bit easier.”
Here are Game 10 video highlights: