Burnside wins tense softball

Press, 2 December 1985, Page 60

Burnside wins tense softball

All the pre-match predictions of a tight encounter lived up to expectations yesterday in the women’s softball clash between the arch rivals, Burnside and Robert Brown Albion. Burnside walked off the diamond as winner, 2-1, after a nailbiting, 10-innings tiebreaker. This leaves Burnside unbeaten in the competition, and one up in the series of three to determine Canterbury’s representative at the national inter-club contest in March.

There was only standing room at the ball park, and the large crowd which came to be entertained was not disappointed. Both sides displayed some sparkling and exciting softball. Drama began to unfold in the bottom of the first innings when Burnside’s lead-off batter, Chris John, picked up a walk. Robyn Storer then sacrificed, and Albion’s Natalie Hazelwood fired the ball to second. John, who had rounded that base, found herself in a hot box, and a desperate, lunging dive by Albion’s catcher, Penny Salton, had John out. The second innings was tame, but action flared again in the third. Albion’s lead-off, Salton, drove to the right field and was replaced by Kim Hook. Sharon Constable then popped the ball to right field, but Hook was forced out. Constable stole second, and made third on a sacrifice, but there the move stopped. Likewise, for Burnside, the designated batter, Helen Townsend, was stranded on third at the bottom of the frame.

At the top of the fourth, Albion’s lead-off, Lynda O’Cain, drove to make first

base. t J Cheryl Kemp put down the sacrifice, and O’Cain raced to second. Seeing third was wide open, she scampered on where, on the thrown ball, an error occurred, allowing her to reach the home plate. Storer then applied the pressure, but again Burnside could not advance its runner to the plate. Neither side in the fifth was in any scoring position. However, at the bottom of the sixth, Burnside’s top order brought the crowd to its feet as it got the tying run it had so desperately wanted.

With one down, Storer made base on an infield error, with the ball also being fumbled in the outfield, allowing her to reach second base. Jane Earnshaw came up trumps with a brilliant left centre-field triple hit to give Storer the run. Neither side could break the deadlock in the next three turns at bat, and going into the tie-breaker the atmosphere was electric. Albion found itself with all sorts of problems. Its batters failed abysmally to effectively lay down the sacrifice bunt, thus leaving its runner stranded on base. More problems arose for Albion in the field as it faced Burnside’s daunting top order batters in the bottom of the frame. After a conference in the centre of the diamond by Albion, both Storer and Earnshaw were deliberately walked to load bases with only one down. The gamble did not pay for Albion, as the young Anita Perreau, under considerable pressure, slammed a centre-field hit to score the winning run and give her side the advantage in the series.