Sarah - Softball 2020

**Guest Blogger**

Eric Hendrickson

Game #1 - June 22nd

Unfortunately due to the coronavirus, our 14u softball season will be a short one.  Sarah could play 12u softball but we decided to move her up to 14u.  We left our team from last year so I could head coach another team that lost their coach.  I really enjoy this group of girls.

Sarah will mainly play shortstop and pitcher this year.  Tonight she played shortstop.

The other team's pitchers were not very good so we had a lot of base runners.  Sarah had two walks and was hit by a pitch.

Sarah is a great at hustling and loves to slide.

Above, Sarah is about to field a throw from the catcher to try to get out a person stealing second base.  She is focused.  She had no ground balls hit her way.  After a rough start to the game giving up four runs in the first inning, our pitcher, Kylah, got into a grove and pitched great the rest of the game.  The final score was 13-5.

Game #2 - June 24th

We played a double header.  The first game was against the same team from our first game ending with the same result.  

Sarah at least got to swing tonight.  This was a foul ball.  She ended up with two walks and a hit by pitch.  She still has 100% on base percentage.

There pitcher was much improved from last game.  She was throwing harder with more strikes.

There is a lot of pictures of Sarah hitting and running, but not fielding.  Reason is she didn't get much action.  She did have a good play getting a ground ball between 3rd and SS and throwing the girl out at first.

Final score was 13-5.

Game #3 - June 24th

The game we had all been waiting for, Sarah's pitching debut and challenging our former team.  Sarah came ready to battle.

Her pitching was excellent.  She was throwing strikes with good velocity.  She threw with confidence.

Sarah had plenty of pitches to swing at because the opposing pitcher was also pitching great.  Sarah had a pop fly in the infield that almost dropped for a hit.  She also had a hard line drive hit to the pitcher that deflected off her glove to the second basemen who threw her out at first.  She also had a strikeout.  I was happy to see her make contact against a good, fast pitcher.

It was all about the pitchers and catchers as this was a fun pitcher's dual.

Sarah pitched 4 innings giving up 4 runs.  I pulled her at the start of the fifth inning with the score 4-2.  She was clutching her side the previous inning and the start of the 4th inning, but she wouldn't tell me what was ailing her.  She wanted to fight through it.

We ended up losing 5-2, but it was nothing to hang our heads on.  I enjoyed being a part of this game and was not upset that we lost.  Our pitching and catchers are doing a superb job.  We need to work on fielding, especially fly balls, and baserunning.  We left some outs and runs on the field.  Looking forward to playing this team two more times.

Game #4 - June 30th

Rematch against the team we just lost to.

Kyla was pitching tonight and did a great job.

Sarah made contact with the ball when up to bat, but nothing made it out of the infield.  She had a ground ball to 3rd and the pitcher.

We had a 7-3 lead going into the final inning.  The last inning was a complete disaster and we lost 8-7.  Very disappointing.

Game #5 - July 6th

Our third and final game against our former team.  We should have won the last game and we should have won this game.  Unfortunately we lost 9-8.  

We had a 8-6 lead going into the final inning and had mental errors that led to the loss.  It is unfortunate as Kyla had another good pitching performance.  Sarah reached the base after being hit by a pitch at her fist at bat.  She also struck out and popped out to 3rd.  She is frustrated because she is not hitting the ball.

Below I called time to talk to our pitcher.  It was a total "Boomhauer (King of the Hill)" talk.  My incoherent talking ended with a shoulder shrug and arm flex.  Hard to put the scene into words but it made the pitcher laugh and was effective.

Sarah had a few groundballs hit to shortstop.  One was an out, one an error on first basemen, and another a fielding error (part of our last inning debacle).  Disappointing that we should have won the last two games against this team and instead handed them the win in the last inning.

Game #6 - July 8th

We saved the best game of the season for our last game of the season.  

Sarah pitched and although she was not as sharp as she was the last game she pitched, the defense really backed her up well.  We even had two double plays.  

The girls were aggressive and getting dirty sliding.  Girls that had not really hit the ball this year, hit the ball.  Sarah's last two at bats of the season were a fly ball double to left field that went over the fielder's head and a hard ground ball single to left field.  Her at bat was the last at bat of the season for our team.

We won 15-6.  Several of our better players are aging out this year, but we have a decent core of girls returning and some others that have asked if they can be on our team next year.  Looking forward to next season.