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Labor Day games wrapped up play in Weekend 2 of the Athletes Unlimited softball season and we’ve got the highlights including the leaderboard and who will be this week’s captains!
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 11: Team Ocasio tallies seven extra-base hits in 9-5 win over Team Hayward
If batting practice was any indication, not much was going to leave the yard at Parkway Bank Sports Complex in Rosemont.
The hitters of Athletes Unlimited had other ideas when matters counted.
Team Ocasio and Team Hayward combined to hit five home runs Monday with captain Aleshia Ocasio’s Team Purple out-slugging Captain Victoria Hayward’s Team Blue 9-5.
A refreshingly cool breeze of 16 mph coming straight in held up most flyballs hit during both teams’ batting-practice sessions.
Things changed in the top of the first inning when Erika Piancastelli launched a two-out solo homer against Danielle O’Toole over the wall in left-center. There was more to come from Piancastelli. She doubled in the third inning and homered again in the sixth as the second part of back-to-back shots with Jessie Warren. Piancastelli leads Athletes Unlimited with four homers this season.
For her efforts, Piancastelli earned 100 stat points (40 for each of the homers and 20 for the double). She also was named MVP 1 for 60 points and totaled 240 for the game, with her team’s points for winning the game and winning innings.
In addition to Piancastelli and Warren, Nadia Taylor homered for Team Ocasio as did Nerissa Myers for Team Hayward.
“Surprised? A little bit,” Piancastelli said of the homer barrage despite the conditions. “My game plan, like I was telling the girls, was to hit the ball hard on the ground because of the way the wind was blowing. The way that a couple of them had gone out, it shocked me a little bit. It just showed that we hit the ball hard. It felt good.”
As far as leading Athletes Unlimited in homers, Piancastelli seems to be taking it in stride.
“It’s not something I really think about,” she said. “I’m having a great time with my girls, great vibes all the time. They really hype me up every single time so I feel really comfortable right now. I’m seeing the ball really well, and I’m just playing my best game.”
Warren was a triple shy of the cycle as she singled in the third and had a two-run double in the fourth. She earned 190 points for the game as well as MVP 2 honors. Warren noted that the homer was her first in two years.
“So that felt good,” she said. “I was so happy. I actually had a plan going into that at-bat. I usually have plans going into my at-bats. But sometimes I let the game get a little bigger than what it should, and those plans kind of fall out of my head. But something about that at-bat, I stuck to my plan every single pitch and got the pitch I was looking for, and I even talked to Erika (Piancastelli) and Nadia (Taylor) and a couple of the right-handed batters about my plan before my at-bat, and I was really sold on sticking to it. I did. I was just super excited to hit a home run because, like I said, I hadn’t hit one in so long.
“I was actually joking with some of the girls, ‘I’m a contact hitter now. I’m no longer a home run hitter, so I’m OK with it. It’s pretty cool, and I’m proud of myself that I was able to stick to that plan like I used to do all the time and come out successful.”
MVP 3 honors went to Ocasio, who pitched four innings in relief of starter Kelly Barnhill, and gave up four hits and two runs (one earned). At the plate, she tripled and walked twice. She had 188 points for the game and 512 for this round of competition as she strives to be a team captain for Tuesday’s draft.
Team Hayward won 40 innings points for winning the first, third and fifth innings. They were ahead 3-1 until Team Ocasio put across five in the top of the fourth and three more in the sixth.
Team captain Hayward piled up 40 stat points with a walk, a single and two stolen bases. In addition to her 40 for hitting the homer, Myers added 10 more stats points by being hit by a pitch.
Team Hayward finished 1-2 in this round while Team Ocasio was 2-1.
Here are the Game 11 video highlights:
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Game 12: Sanders and Reed help Team Osterman in 2-1 win and earn remaining captain spots
Perhaps Athletes Unlimited should roll out a nice comfy captain’s chair for Cat Osterman.
The way Osterman has been working lately, they should make sure that chair reclines.
Osterman was dominant again Monday night, tossing a complete-game one-hitter as the team she captained beat the team captained by Samantha Show 2-1 to complete the second week of play in Athletes Unlimited softball.
For her efforts, Osterman will be a team captain again for next week’s games and will draft a new team Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET/5 p.m. CT.
Osterman has piled up 1,228 points over two weekends of play. She’ll be joined at the draft table by competing captains Aleshia Ocasio (976) and her teammates of this past weekend, Janie Reed (920) and DJ Sanders (900).
Both Osterman and Ocasio will be captains for a second straight week. Reed and Sanders will be first-time captains.
Here is all the 37-year-old Osterman has accomplished so far: She is 5-0 in Athletes Unlimited play with an ERA of 0.48 and 41 strikeouts in 29 innings pitched. In Monday night’s victory, played under cool and windy conditions at Parkway Bank Sports Complex, she struck out nine and gave up a third-inning single to Megan Wiggins as the only hit.
She also got help from a spectacular play by center fielder Haylie McCleney, who raced to the gap in right-center and laid out to make a diving catch against Show in the sixth.
Osterman was pitching on zero days rest. She worked four innings of relief Sunday.
“I was going to go as long as the team needed me because I think everybody wanted to get a W tonight,” she said after Monday night’s gem. “I was trying to pitch efficiently. I didn’t necessarily start out that way at first, but I was going to keep going until I either got into too much trouble or game ended.
“There was no thought process of how long. I was going to do what I needed to take to help the team win.”
It was Reed who got things going in breathtaking fashion when she hit an inside-the-park home run with two outs in the second to give her team a 1-0 lead. Reed hit a flyball down the left-field line. Left fielder Emily Crane made a diving attempt at the ball, but it got past her and Reed turned on the jets.
“I’ve hit quite a few of those (kinds of balls), especially in my college career,” she said. “I held the doubles record at Oregon for a while, and it’s pretty much a lot of those. So I figured two right away. It got past (Crane). I was thinking three. I wasn’t thinking four, but (the coach) kind of held me up halfway at home. I ran through it and luckily the throw wasn’t on target. I don’t have very many of those in my career. That was pretty fun.”
Reed earned MVP 1 honors and an extra 60 points for the game. Osterman got 40 extra points for being MVP 2, and Sanders earned 20 more for being MVP 3. Her RBI double in the fourth put Team Osterman up 2-1 after Megan Wiggins hit an RBI single in the third for Team Show to tie the game.
After that it was all Osterman. She did make her way out to the second-base bag to acknowledge McCleney’s big catch.
“I knew the wind was coming hard in,” Osterman said. “So I knew off the bat if it was an out, we had a shot as long as it was within Haylie’s range. She made a tremendous play. I had no clue exactly where it was going. I was just watching her run along the warning track and was obviously super excited as soon as she caught it.”
Osterman’s teammates seem to be deriving inspiration from her.
“I think for me it’s just making me want to be better at the plate,” said Sanders, who hit two doubles. “If she’s working that hard on the field, on the mound, I feel like it’s my responsibility to make sure we get some runs on the the board for her.”
The hard-luck losing pitcher was Haylie Wagner, a Week 1 captain who has worked as hard as any pitcher over the first two weeks. She worked 4.2 innings, giving up five hits and two runs.
With the first pick in Tuesday’s draft, Osterman was asked if she’d again go with catcher Gwen Svekis, whom she took in the first round last week.
The Cat was coy.
“I think I’m going to have to think long and hard on that one,” she said.
Here are Game 12 video highlights: