What a weekend!!

[frogs_mom_15]

Well, I'm finally up and functioning this afternoon after getting home at about 12:30am last night. It was an absolutely great weekend of ball! Congrats to the Vipers 93 for finishing 1st. Very good team. Our girls finished 3rd out of 29 teams and had a record of 4-3.
The good:
First two games were unbelievable, they beat the Lady Hustlers (2nd place) 7-1. Then they played the Vipers 93. This was one great game. Hit after hit, with great defence on both sides. Thunder pulled off a spectacular double play (ss,1st, to home)in the 4th to keep the score 0-0. Last inning, out of time, Vipers home team, runners on 2nd and 1st. Girl slapps a dinker between second and center to score the only run. GREAT GAME! Getting ready for our game with Comets 94. My bone headed DD decides that she is gonna jump a fence to get a wiffle ball. Leg gets hung and falls over blowing out her right knee! She is the starting catcher, and we only have 9 girls to begin with!!!! They stick her out in right field and have her bunt so we don't have to forfiet. Lost the game 4-2 I think. Some how we end up as the second seed going into Sundays single elimination. We were able to get a player from our 13's, so we had nine able bodied players out there. I want to give a shout out to Mac for stepping up and taking over the catching duties! She hadn't played there in quite a while and did a fantastic job in the near 90 degree heat with all that gear! She caught all four games.
We get to the final four to face the Vipers once again. I think the heat finally took a toll on our girls and they lost 4-0. Finishing in 3rd place was a great accomplishment for our girls and we are very proud of them!

The bad:
Though there wasn't any nastiness in any of the games (that I watched)between the girls, some of the umpires were clearly not qualified to do this level of play. Quite a few blown calls all across the board.

The ugly:
Comets 94. LOL Just kidding! I enjoyed talking to you this weekend and you have a strong team that will go far! Wish my DD hadn't had the brain fart and we could have played y'all with a healthy team. Maybe next time.

Check out Comets 94's link in the previous post (our season begins) to get the low down.

[Comets94]

It was good to meet you as well. The Birmingham Vipers always host a great tournament and this one was no exception. There were even fireworks during the bottom of the 3rd inning of the championship game between the Vipers 93 and Lady Hustlers team. One of the transformers for the lights just outside the rightfield fence blew taking out all of the lights on fields 1-4. They moved to one of the fields up the hill and finished the game.

Our pool was tough but we wouldn't have had it any other way. The teams from F Pool ended 1st, 2nd, tied for 3rd, and tied for 5th. Had our team not had to play the Lady Hustlers in the quarter finals it might have been an all F Pool final four. Either way though it was a great weekend at the park.

Tell Frog we hope she heals quickly and can get back behind the dish.

[jofus]

Sorry to hear about your DD's knee Hopefully it's not too bad and heals quickly and well.

My DD played in a nice tournament in Johnson City TN this weekend, thanks to the East Tennessee Ramblers for hosting the Smokey Mountain Championship tournament.

We had been a few girls short of having a solid team all spring, and picked up 3 new ones just this week, so this was our first tournament together, and all things considered, they did very well. My DD had a blast, pitched one very good game and beat a team that had beat us the last few times we met, and pitched in another game that I could have pitched in (I felt sorry for the poor team we played, they were out of their league pretty badly in this tournament), hit the ball fairly well, and played a very good shortstop, especially considering that she hasn't played much infield since last summer.

[Skarp]

Whoa! Civility violation!!

It's one thing to go to a tournament, meet people, make secret love connections (cough...Numero Uno / A Game Gal...cough), etc., but it's quite another thing to come on here talking all civil and polite and stuff.

Let's keep it disrespectful people!

[narent]

I agree frogs_mom... very nice tournament with some GREAT competition. Very well coached teams. We finished 2-1 in pool play (12U) but were eliminated by the Atlanta Vipers in our first bracket game.

I do have to agree with your assessment of the umpires. We had some big time blown calls, one for us and one against us. The first one was against us -- 2-1 count and our girl sqares around to bunt. The ball is TIPPED, does not change trajectory in the slightest and the umpire calls our girl out. Our coach did not argue because he was forewarned that coaches would be kicked out of the game immediately if they argued any calls. Didn't matter... we ended up winning the game, so no big deal, but a bad call nonetheless. The 2nd call went in our favor and the opposing coach did not say anything. We were in the middle of a HUGE inning. We had bases loaded with one out and one of our girls hits a pop-up to 2nd base. No call for infield fly. The girl misses the ball and all our runners advance, no outs recorded. We ended up winning 16-7, so no problem here, but the other coach did not argue this either, probably for the same reasons we did not argue the first call.

People make mistakes, I understand that. Like I said, it really didn't matter in either case. It's just the first time I saw some big time messed up calls and absolutely no challenge from the coaches. I do have to take my hat off to all the blues for working out there in 90+ temps with very high humidity. Maybe they were just cranky from the start and didn't want to deal with anyone's bs.

Still an awesome tournament. Hope to be back next year. BTW, anyone know who ended up winning the 12U bracket?

[Comets94]

Atlanta Vipers Prance beat Chattanooga Xplosion to win the 12U tournament.