The 14's got their season started at the Cudahy Early Bird NSA National Qualifier in late May and picked up a couple of victories in a talented field. In 2013, when this group was in the 12U category they completed a run to the championship. This season, they fell a game short. The cold spring that preceded the tournament and early practice period limited the amount of time the team could spend outside and the rust showed. After claiming run-rule victories in their first two games against the Milwaukee Invaders and Franklin Force, the Rage girls found themselves matched up with the Queen of Diamond 14U club. The same club that they battled in the 2013 12U championship.
This time the Diamonds came out on top in a classic 2-1 game that went the full 7 innings. The Rage held a 1-0 lead into the 7th inning but allowed two runs in the bottom of the 7th and lost. The next opponent up was the Wisconsin Lightning - another high quality opponent. Again, the Rage started out strong building a lead, only to see it evaporate in the bottom of the 5th inning.
Overall, we should all be very pleased with how the girls played! We stressed with the girls that we do expect to win every time we step on the field of play because we have that amount of confidence in the girls. That being said, we all have to realize the reality of what the Spring provided us for both practice and preparing for live pitching. With only having (3) outdoor practices we also were not able to really dig into specific defenses and situations which probably could have helped us on Sunday. The girls still played a fantastic tournament!
In both the games we lost we scored 1st and carried the lead late into the games. What we were not able to do in both games was manufacture a few more runs which could have both taken away any momentum from the other team and provided us more of a cushion. We were definitely in the position to win both of those games if a few more things would have gone our way.
Lastly, we as coaches are still coming together as a unit and are adjusting to each of our new roles. With new coaches in the 1st and 3rd base coaching boxes this year, and having a different cadence of signs and such caused some confusion and we definitely had some miscommunications, but nothing that we can’t fix. The girls are back on the diamond on June 5th in MMFL play against Germantown, and then head to Janesville for the weekend for another tournament.
