[Ksyrup]

Exhausted, crisply baked, and several hundred dollars lighter, I'm back at work after getting back from Columbus around 10pm last night from the world series our girls played in.

What an up and down weekend, and with strange parallels to last year's Columbus world series (Caitlin played for a different team in 10U than the current one). We had 4 pool play games - and lost them all. First game Caitlin pitched really well, but they scored 3 cheap runs on a couple of misplayed balls and a couple of groundouts, and we lost 3-1. Had a runner on 3rd with 1 out in the 1st - didn't score. Had runners on 2nd and 3rd with NO OUTS in the second and struck out 3 straight times. And the hitting, or lack thereof, continued pretty much the whole weekend.

Second game we played a team that ended up undefeated in pool play, and we lost 7-4. We were down 7-1 until the end, and played horribly. Friday evening we were supposed to play our third game, but rain cut it short in the middle of the 1st inning, so it was cancelled and rescheduled for 8:30am. This was by far the best team we played all weekend. They had 3-4 girls who hit shots to the fence every time up. But they never tried to advance runners other than with hits, so we held them to 1-0 until the last inning, when our second baseman didn't charge a grounder with 2 outs, let them get on, and the big girls put 3 into the gap and they scored 4 runs to put it away 5-0. Even though we didn't score, it was the best game we played to that point.

Final game was against a team that had 2 losses and a tie, so we had an opportunity to finish as the 4th seed instead of 5th (the 6th seed didn't show up for the tournament). We came out and played our worst game of the year, losing 8-0 in 5 innings to some seriously weak-ass sauce. The parents were about ready to pack the cars and head home at that point. To top it off, our catcher broke her wrist on a foul tip.

So we ended up with 5th seed and had to play a 2 seed Saturday night in the first elimination bracket game. Our goal was to get to Sunday. Caitlin pitched and was awesome. She threw about 75% change-ups and made those girls look silly. We scored 4 in the first, with Caitlin driving in the 1st run with her 1st hit of the weekend. We cruised 9-3 - and it wasn't even that close as we made a couple of errors and let them score 3 in the 4th inning

That put us into the top 32 with a game against another 2 seed Sunday afternoon. This team had put up 9, 15, and 18 runs in 3 of their pool play games. Caitlin started again and did great. She gave up a run in the 2nd on a play that should have ended the inning - runner on 2nd, ball hit to the left of the SS, and she waited for the runner to move out of her way before making a play, and the ball was past her at that point. It was basically a routine grounder. If she had just run into the runner, the runner would have been out. So they scored 1, and through 6 innings, we were being no-hit.

Bottom of the 7th, Caitlin lead off with her 2nd (and last) hit of the weekend. They pinch-ran for her, and with 2 outs, runner on 3rd, and a full count, our CF hit a grounder through the left side to tie the game. So we went to extra innings, international tiebreaker where you start with a runner on 2nd. Caitlin got the first girl out, but the runner advanced to 3rd. Next batter hit a line drive to the SS and we doubled the girl off 3rd to get out of the inning. Bottom of the 8th, our runner on 2nd advanced to 3rd on a wild pitch and scored on a single to LF to win the game. Caitlin only struck out 1 in 8 innings, but her change-up was so good all the other team could do was pop up or hit weak grounders to 2nd or SS most of the time.

So we advanced to the top 16 against a 4 seed. We started the wrong pitcher, IMO. This girl is a 2nd year 12U player, but as a pitcher, she's too wild and walks too many. And considering how poorly we hit, we had no margin for error. She actually pitched pretty well, but in the 2nd inning, she gave up a hit, a couple of walks, and threw 2 wild pitches that scored 2 runs. We scored 1 in the 5th but couldn't score again and lost 2-1.

So it was a great end to a shaky weekend overall. We finished higher than any other team in our pool, despite being the last place team. And the team that beat us ended up being the runner-up in the whole thing. So that's not too bad.

The parallels from last year are weird - on our other team, we lost all our pool play games (1 was a forfeit win from a team that didn't show up), were seeded 5th, and Caitlin pitched us to an 8-3 victory in our first bracket game, then a 1-0 extra inning win to get to the top 8 (only 26 teams in that tourney). Then we lost 2-1. BIZARRE.

We've got 1 more tournament next weekend to officially wrap up this season. We'll be losing a couple of players to 14U and making some minor adjustments to the team before playing a couple of fall tourneys as an official "2nd year 12U" team and hitting the off-season indoor workouts and practices during winter. Caitlin decided to give up basketball, so we're going to hit the strength and conditioning stuff hard this fall and winter. She has a chance to be a really good player, and I don't want her looking back on this in 10 years and wishing she had put more effort into becoming a better player.