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Pro News: Games 7 & 8 of Athletes Unlimited Softball See Aleshia Ocasio, DJ Sanders Earn MVPs As Cat Wins #3

Aleshia Ocasio helped Team Purple pull out the 6-4 over Team Orange in Game 7. Photo Credit – Jade Hewitt Media.

Weekend 2 of the Athletes Unlimited softball season kicked off Saturday with Games 7 & 8 of the season and the tricky Chicago winds definitely played a factor in the results in the opening games this Labor Day weekend!

Here are recaps of the games done by Bruce Miles for Athletes Unlimited and photos courtesy of Jade Hewitt Media.

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Caleigh Clifton is greeted at home plate after her three-run home in the 4th inning of Athletes Unlimited Softball’s Game 7. Photo Credit – Jade Hewitt Media

Game 7: Clifton and Piancastelli Each Tally 3 RBI in 6-4 Victory for Team Ocasio

On any day at the Parkway Bank Sports Complex, one can sit and count the jets that fly into and out of O’Hare International Airport.

Caleigh Clifton did her part Saturday to keep air traffic control busy.

Batting in the top of the fourth inning with 40 points on the line, Clifton got a ball up into the jet stream for an opposite-field three-run homer. That proved crucial as Team Purple under captain Aleshia Ocasio held on to beat Team Orange, captained by Samantha Show, 6-4.

No doubt Clifton got all of it, but the ball got an extra boost from a strong breeze (21 mph) blowing from left to right. The ball kept carrying, and it traveled well over the bleachers in right field.

“Before that at-bat, I saw Nadia (Taylor) really get into one and sent it to left field, but it really didn’t go anywhere,” Clifton said. “I was thinking that if I did hit a ball to the right side that it might fly, but I wasn’t anticipating for that to happen. I saw an outside pitch and took it that way. I was head-down and running right out of the box.”

Team Purple needed its captain to stave off a rally in the bottom of the seventh inning, when Team Show scored three runs to make the game tight and interesting.

Ocasio started the game in the circle and pitched six innings before giving way to Kelly Barnhill in the bottom of the seventh. But Ocasio put herself back in with two outs and a runner on third. She retired Taylor Edwards on a pop foul to end the game.

“One pitch, that was fun,” Ocasio said.

Ocasio wound up pitching 6.1 innings and giving up eight hits and one unearned run.

Game 7 points

For her efforts she was named MVP-1, picking up a total of 256 points, 60 for the MVP 1 vote and 196 from the game. MVP 2 (40 points) went to Clifton (200 total points) and MVP 3 went to catcher Erika Piancastelli, who hit a three-run homer in the seventh for important insurance. She again worked well with Ocasio and earned 180 points.

“I think we just have a connection,” Piancastelli said. “We’re always on the same page. “We communicate really well in our bullpens and think that helps me understand what she is as a pitcher and let her go to it in certain situations. And I think we also have that connection where if she doesn’t feel comfortable throwing a pitch, she’ll just shake me off . She trusts me, and I trust her. So I think it’s just a good vibe that we have together.”

Team Show picked up a run in the fifth. In the seventh, they got an RBI single from Aubrey Leach and a two-run homer from Megan Wiggins, who stroked one just inside the right-field foul pole.

Wiggins also singled and earned 60 total points total.

With two outs, Barnhill gave up a triple to Amanda Chidester, and back in came Ocasio.

“I wanted to go as long as I could (as a starter),” Ocasio said. “They were hitting me late in the game. I decided to go with Kelly. We talked about me staying ready. It wasn’t for me to come in after one or two batters. It was that the situation called for it.”

Haylie Wagner, a captain last weekend, started for Team Show and worked 6.2 innings giving up 11 hits and six runs.

Here are the Game 7 video highlights:

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DJ Sanders was the Game 8 MVP after hitting a two-run homer in her team’s win. Photo Credit: Jade Hewitt.

Game 8: Team Osterman Defeats Team Hayward with the Help of DJ Sanders’ 3-Run Homer

If Cat Osterman had to give up her first run of the Athletes Unlimited season and her first hit of Saturday, she might as well have done it in grand style.

The fact that captain Osterman’s Team Gold came away with a 5-2 victory over Team Blue (captain Victoria Hayward) had her smiling in the end.

Osterman was cruising and her team was leading 4-0 in the top of the fifth inning when Morgan Howe strode to the plate with one out. Howe proceeded to launch a booming, majestic home run to right-center field. The ball carried over the 36-foot-high scoreboard, taking the breath away from almost everybody at Parkway Bank Sports Complex and eliciting a little smile from Osterman herself, despite giving up the home run.

“If you’re going to get a good hit off of me, it might as well be solid,” said Osterman, who has won all three of her starts this season. “So I’ll tip my hat to Morgan Howe. But (that’s) not the way I want to give up my first run. At the same time, if you look back on the kind of runs I give up, that’s how I give’em up.

“I knew off the bat it was gone. I didn’t really watch it, so I just kind of looked at everyone else and was like, ‘I’m assuming that went far.’ But I knew off the bat it was gone. You tip your hat—3-2 (count), she was battling, and she hit a pitch that I brought over the plate a little too much.”

Osterman was named the game’s MVP 2, finishing second to teammate DJ Sanders, who hit a two-run homer in the fourth inning to put her team up 4-0. Osterman, the overall points leader for the season, added 202 Saturday while Sanders tallied 200: 40 for the homer, 60 for the MVP and 100 for innings and win points.

Team Osterman put across single runs in each of the second and third innings. First baseman Tori Vidales led off the second with a single and eventually scored. She opened the fourth with a single and rode home on Sanders’ homer to left-center. Vidales was the No. 5 hitter in the lineup, but she proved to be a spark plug leading off innings.

“Yeah, oddly enough, it’s happened to me quite a few times while I’ve been here,” she said. “I think I’ve been in the five-hole most every single game, and I’ve led off probably five times since the start of the first game. It’s been crazy. I don’t know. My goal is to always get on. I think my mindset changes a little bit when the runners are on because you see a visual of what you’re trying to do, what your mission is and what you’re trying to accomplish.

Game 8 points

“So when there’s nobody on, I’m just trying to square it up and wherever it goes, it goes it goes. Hopefully it lands somewhere where the defenders aren’t, but just getting on because I can be the spark plug because the hitters behind me are going to knock me in.”

That happened in the fourth with Sanders, who connected off Morgan Foley. Foley was Team Hayward’s starting pitcher. She gave way to Taylor McQuillin in the second but came back to begin the fourth in the circle.

Sanders wasn’t sure what to make of the homer.

“Hitting it, I didn’t really feel on time, which is kind of why I stopped my swing, but I guess I squared it up enough for it to go,” she said. “So I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome.”

This day again was about Osterman, who has given up only one run in 18 innings pitched so far this season.

“I competed well with probably my B game today,” she said. “I didn’t necessarily feel as great as I did last Monday (a complete-game shutout). But I felt well enough. Obviously, our team had some momentum, which was easy to keep carrying over.”

Here are Game 8 video highlights:

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