Mississippi Blast 16U

The Blast captured its first USFA State Championship by going 6-0 in Monticello. The girls swept through the tournament field outscoring their opponents 41-2. In the championship game the Blast fell behind 2-1 after the first. The score remained the same until the top of the fifth when Lauren led off with a ground rule double. A dropped third strike allowed her to move to third where Ashton followed with her own ground rule double scoring Lauren and tying the score. Heather then bunted Ashton to third where she would score on a pass ball for the go ahead run. Meredith captured the win on the mound pitching a beautiful game recording 10 strikeouts. Congrats!!!

What a tournament! Way to go girls! We started pool play saturday morning with a 7-0 win over Southern Heat. We played well defensively and Kate pitched the first no-hitter of the season. Our next pool play game was against the Hurricanes (11). We managed to push 13 runs across the plate and finish pool play undefeated. The first tournament game was against the Havoc. We managed to win, but did not play especially well. In the second round of the tournament we matched up with a very good Hurricane (12) team. With a tremendous pitching performance by "MO" and some timely hitting we managed to win 5-0. Great game girls! Our first game on Sunday, the finals of the winners bracket, put us against the Lady Hawks. Once again we had a great pitching performance and solid hitting. We went on to win 4-1 and advance to the championship game vs. the Hurricane (12) team. In the first game we managed to draw first blood with one run in the bottom of the first inning. In the top of the second the Canes managed to tie the game 1-1, however in the third inning disaster struck with the Canes pushing 6 runs across for a 7-1 lead. Although we did lose we managed to score 3 more runs in an 8-4 loss. In the championship game the Canes struck early and often scoring 3 runs in the first and took command early. They managed to add another run in the second for a 4-0 lead. In the third the "sticks" came to life. With 2 outs and a runner on second we banged out 5 consecutive basehits, highlighted by Taylor's game winning 2 run double, to take a 5-4 lead. In the fifth we manged to get one insurance run on a sac fly by Lauren. In additon to great defense and offense we managed to get a tremendous pitching performance from Lauren. Way to go Lauren! Great job this weekend girls. You played great softball! Onward to Birmingham.