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The third straight day of the Athletes Unlimited softball season brought more great softball and some stellar pitching by Danielle O’Toole and Cat Osterman.
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 5: O’TOOLE GETS THE START AND THE SAVE IN TEAM FAGAN’S 7-6 NAIL-BITER
There was no real chance that captains’ spots were on the line in Monday afternoon’s game between the Blue and Purple teams at Parkway Bank Sports Complex.
But pride was definitely on the line, and that can be a powerful motivating force.
On top of that, players on both teams might have been looking to impress the four captains who will draft new teams Tuesday for Athletes Unlimited’s next round of softball games.
One player who had to come away feeling good about herself was starting – and finishing – pitcher Danielle O’Toole of Team Purple, captained by Sami Fagan.
After a rough outing in her season opener, O’Toole has steadily found herself. On Monday, she started and worked four innings of one-run ball.
Oh, but there was more, much more.
Team Fagan had a seemingly comfy 7-2 lead heading into the bottom of the seventh inning. But Team Blue, captained by Nicole Pendley would not go quietly, pushing across three runs against reliever Randi Hennigan. After Morgan Foley walked a pair of batters, the call for relief went to … O’Toole.
The left-hander retired the next three batters on a pop out, a sacrifice fly and a strikeout to strand a pair of runners and allow her team to escape with a 7-6 victory.
For her heroics, O’Toole earned MVP 1 honors and an extra 60 points for a total of 210 for the day.
Team Fagan finished the first round of play with a record of 1-2 while Team Pendley went 0-3.
“When I first came out (of the game), no, I did not expect to go back in,” O’Toole said. “Second, when we did decide that might be a possibility, I didn’t have time to think about it or mentally prepare. I went out and threw, I don’t know, maybe seven warmup pitches. Then I walked onto the field. Very quick transition. Not much time to think.”
The pitcher known as “Tooly” came into the game with an ERA of 6.13, thanks to a loss and a no-decision in her first two outings.
Monday’s performance under pressure had to be a nice lift for her.
“It feels good,” she said. “It’s nice just to kind of make sure our team feels good after the kind of start we had. It hasn’t been bad. It’s just that everyone here is so good that it’s hard to feel good all the time. I would just say that working together has been fun, and I’m kind of glad we got the first weekend done.”
MVP 2 honors and 40 additional points went to O’Toole’s teammate Sam Fischer, who had an RBI double in the third inning, a three-run homer in a three-run fifth inning and a walk in the sixth for 70 individual points. Her 210 individual points vaulted her all the way up to 320 for the three games.
Interestingly, Fischer was a ninth-round pick in last week’s inaugural draft. Perhaps she opened up some eyes for the captains picking new teams for the coming weekend. She laughed and said making an impression for the next draft was not on her mind.
“Honestly, no,” she said. “I was kind of irritated with myself my first at-bat. I struck out and was not aggressive. It was not my approach, and I think that fueled the rest of my day because I did not want to go in there and feel like that again. So I went out there and swung the bat the way I knew I should have in that first one, and what happened happened.
“If I get picked higher, cool. If I get picked the same, in the lower rounds, cool. I just want to be on a good team.”
The third MVP was Sahvanna Jaquish from Team Pendley. She was 3-for-3 with a pair of doubles, three RBI and a walk. She finished the first round with 170 points. More important, she said she was happy with the way her team came back.
Team Fagan jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first. The teams traded runs in the third before Fischer’s three-run homer in the top of the fifth. The teams each scored a run in the sixth.
“We didn’t expect to come out there and make the game close,” she said. “We just wanted to just push one run across and win the inning. But then found momentum and took that and ran with that. Then Tooly came in and did her thing to shut us down. I was like, ‘Man, this is getting exciting.’ This can happen with any team because, again, we’re all so good, It’s really entertaining to be on teams like that.”
Check out the Game 5 video highlights:
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Game 6: OSTERMAN’S SHUTOUT SECURES NO. 1 CAPTAIN SPOT
If anyone is suited for the bright lights of prime time, it’s Cat Osterman.
Osterman closed out the first week of Athletes Unlimited softball by taking matters into her own left hand and tossing a complete-game 5-0shutout for Team Warren over Team Wagner Monday night at Parkway Bank Sports Complex.
The 37-year-old faced only minor trouble as Team Warren went 3-0 from Saturday-Monday. Team Wagner finished the round 2-1.
Osterman struck out 11, including a dropped third strike in the ninth inning that forced her to face one more batter. Jazmyn Jackson flied out to end the game, and Osterman had a two-hitter.
As the result of Athletes Unlimited’s innovative scoring system, there will be four new captains to draft teams for next weekend’s second round of games. That draft takes place Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 6 p.m. ET/5 p.m. CT.
The top-scoring player and team captains are Osterman (604 total points from team and individual performance), Samantha Show (524) from Team Wagner, Victoria Hayward (490) from Team Warren and Aleshia Ocasio (464), also from Team Warren.
Perhaps the only down side is that this winning band of Warren players will be broken up.
“Yeah, I think we knew going into the game that the band was going to have to get broken up a little bit,” said Osterman, who was named MVP 1 for Monday’s game, earning her 60 points. “We’re hoping it’s only for a week and then maybe we can find our way back to each other. But obviously super proud of the performance Vic’s had this week. Unfortunately with Week 1 and not a whole lot of mixing up yet with the points, we kind of knew it was going to happen.
“I think that it tears at our hearts a little bit, but we’re also super proud for each other. I know that I can speak for all three of us that this first team will probably go down … we’ll all hold it very close to our hearts for the rest of time, I think, but definitely the time here.”
The Team Warren offense gave Osterman all the support she needed with single runs in each of the first two innings against Team Gold captain Haylie Wagner. Four singles in the first did the trick. Aubrey Leach’s second single of the game drove in the run in the second inning.
Hayward hit a booming home run to the cover on the right-field bleachers to lead off the fifth. In the sixth, Janie Reed doubled, and she came in on a two-run homer by Katiyana Mauga in the sixth.
Reed took home 40 points for being MVP 2, and Mauga earned 20 for MVP 3 honors.
But this night belonged to Osterman. She hit a batter and walked one in the second, but for the most part, she cruised.
“I think the biggest thing [is that] Gwen (Svekis, catcher) and I have been on the same page, both in the scrimmage (last week) and the first two games we’ve played together. That helps when you can be on the same page as your catcher. But a little bit of everything, to be honest. I was trying more so to pitch to contact and get them to swing early, and if they got flyouts and groundouts, so be it. If strikeouts came, that was fine. But I think getting older, your mindset has to change a little bit so my shift in mindset wasn’t, ‘How many strikeouts can I get tonight?’ It was just, ‘Get us off the field as quick as possible.’”
So now the four captains will have until late Tuesday afternoon to prepare for the draft and try to select teams as good as the two that were on the field Monday night.
“I’m on the player executive committee, so I have been in mock drafts,” Hayward said. “But the real thing has proven to be much more impactful, and things can really go wrong if you don’t pay attention. I was already starting to think in the seventh inning. I didn’t know that I was going to be the second captain (from Team Warren), so I’m really proud about that. I think we learned a lot this first week about the importance of elite pitching. Our team had Cat and Aleshia Ocasio who both threw gems, which kind of let the offense do what we needed to do without a lot of pressure on us. Pitching is huge.
“And clutch hitting, hitters that can hit. And good defense. You’re really looking for well-rounded players. There were a lot of really good performances. It’s going to be really tough to put a good team together. We have really high expectations after this first week.”
Here are the Game 6 video highlights: