2012 MVP Winners Announced

This years MVP winnners are ....

Female: Jacinta Kelly

Male: John McGreevy

Congratulations to both of this years winners and thanks to everyone for voting.

The trophys will be presented at this years table quiz which is provisionally booked for Thursday November 8th in the Oslo.

2012 MVP Nominees

The nominations for this years MVP are as follows, if you're eligible to vote this year then you have already been notified. Voting is open now and closes at midday on Friday 19th October so get your votes in now. The winners will be announced after that and the awards will be presented at this years end of season party/table quiz.


To qualify for a nomination this year you have to be a paid up member of the club who has attended at least one tournament.

IOST 2012 Review

Squad
Rob, Johanna, Orla, John (c), Colm, Jacinta, Andrew, Evan, Breandan, Catherine and Turlough. Graham and Ger joined us from the Cork softball team too.

This years IOST was held in the Pavilion in the University of Limerick with all of the games being played on astro turf. It must be said that this is an excellent facility for a softball tournament although playing softball on perfectly flat pitches took a while to get used to.

The team arrived very ridiculously early on Saturday morning to glorious Limerick sunshine and an excellent new facility, sadly we lost all of our games on Saturday losing to the Suspects, Belfast, Marley's first team, The Stingers (who traveled from the UK) and the Renegades. It took us some time to adapt to the new surface which cost us early on, who would have thought that adapting to a perfectly flat pitch in the sunshine would be something we would struggle with! We also struggled with the usual Galway issue with hour long breaks between games. We left the pitches on Saturday with a chance to redeem ourselves in the Bowl league tournament on Sunday. Lust, Belfast and Castleknock also qualified for the Bowl tournament.

We took the opportunity on Saturday night for an introspective team meeting, we spent many hours discussing how we could improve as a team and what we needed to do win a game. We all then went to bed early to rest and recuperate before Sundays games. This is the official record of the weekends tournament and this recollection of events that night is what will stand in the official record.

It turns out our hard work on Saturday night worked as we won our first game on Sunday morning beating Lust to break our losing streak from Saturday. It was a good morale boost that wasn't tempered by losing our next game to the Castleknock in a low scoring encounter. We then beat Belfast to finish the Bowl League tournament in second place meaning we played Lust again in the Bowl semi final.

After 2 hours off it took us a little while to get a rhythm going again and by the end of the second innings we were 7-3 behind. We got going again after that and started clawing back some runs finishing the third innings 7-7 and the fourth 9-9. We fielded the top of what would be the final innings and conceded only one run meaning we went to bat the bottom of the last needing 2 runs to win. We quite quickly got the first run required to take us to 10-10, we then worked a runner into a scoring position on third. The on deck batter stepped up ready to go when the umpire called time ending the game after the allotted 50 minutes was up.

The tournament rules stated that no new inning could occur after 45 minutes after the start time and games must stop after 50 minutes and the score would go back to the last completed innings which was the fourth innings that was tied at 9-9, the tournament rules then stated that if level the game would be counted back to the previous innings which was again 7-7. This left the game tied again without a tournament rule to cover the situation. The umpire then called the tournament organisers who decided that the game should be counted back until there was a winner which meant that the game went back to the second inning which ended with Lust in front by 7 runs to our 3 meaning Lust qualified for the Bowl final.

It's a hard way to go out of a tournament but we gave our all to get back level in a game we fell behind in. Congratulations to Lust who went on to win the Bowl after our semi final beating Belfast in the final. Congratulations must also go to the Limerick Ori-gin-als who successfully defended their IOST Cup.

As requested I have included a picture of an example why you really shouldn't slide on astro turf, click here to see but I warn you it's not a good looking leg, the cut is pretty gruesome too.

The last incident of note that happened over the weekend that needs to be reported on was that Colm bit his tongue. Colm know that the thoughts of the club are with you through this tough time.

I would like to thank Graham and Ger from Cork for helping us out on Saturday, giving us the much needed chance to rotate some players.

Overall I believe we all had an enjoyable weekend, we played some softball, drank some beer, watched softball in the sunshine and drank some beer. The MVP competition and the end of season party will all be sorted out in due course but other than that I'll see you all on Wednesday for training.

Castleknock Invitational 2012 Review

Squad
Kevin, John, Simon, Breandán, Turlough, Rob, Martinus
Angelica, Avril, Orla, Catherine

Thanks to Julie from 2Pak for the above picture.


Review
On a nice sunny day in Castleknock College, a very healthy number of 14 teams competed for the prizes this year. We were drawn in a group of 4, Galway Tribes, Castleknock Bearcats, 2Pak and Templebar Hippeditys. A slow start in the morning against 2 strong teams. Going down easily enough to both 2Pak (the eventual Cup winners) and Bearcats. This meant after lunch we had a must win game against Hippeditys, both teams lost openers so only the winners would likely have any further part to play in proceedings. Despite a nervous last few innings we managed to win this comfortably in the end.

This meant we progressed to Bowl semi final against Castleknock Wildcats. In a closely fought game with runs hard to come by we eventually came out winners by a single run, setting up final against the Renegades, a repeat of the IOST plate final which we won last year. This time, the Renegades got there revenge in another low scoring game, prevailing by 2 runs, well done to them and all the other winners at the weekend.

Results


Round 1
Tribes 0 v 16 2Pak
Tribes 8 v 16 Bearcats
Tribes 23 v 13 Hippeditys

Bowl Semi Final
Tribes 5 v 4 Wildcats

Bowl Final
Tribes 3 v 5 Renegades

Remaining Softball Tournament Schedule Details

We hope to play in the following remaining tournaments this season.

July 21st, Castleknock Invitational, Castleknock College, Castleknock, Dublin
We have played in this excellent competition for the last 6 or 7 years and will return again. We have now finalised our squad for this:

Kevin, John, Simon, Martinus, Breandán, Turlough, Rob, Pat
Avril, Angelica,Catherine, Orla

Aug 11, Munster League Round 1, Kilrush, Co.Clare
A new venue for Softball, and a new team, West Clare. This will be a league based competition including
all teams from Softball Munster (which includes us). Galway Tribes, Cork, Limerick Orig-inals and West Clare.

Aug 17/18, IOST,  University of Limerick, Limerick
Note, venue change. This will now not be in Belfast this year.

Sep 2, Brian Walshe Cup, ASLAA, Dublin Airport, Dublin
The rescheduled (due to waterlogged pitches) Brian Walshe Cup will now be a one day tournament, previously it was to be a full weeekend. Hopefully we can take part in the All-Ireland Cup competition for the first time this year.


If you would like to take part in any of these, please email galway.softball@gmail.com to confirm your place.

Niall Mellon Trust Blitz Review

Sat April 28th, Castleknock College

Squad:
Kevin, Martinus, Rob, Turlough, John McG, Mark Doheny, Conor (on loan from Sluggers)
Angelica, Orla, Jacinta, Kristen

Review:
Just 5 teams this year, so just the one cup competition to compete for. We had a very difficult start in the morning , playing the two top teams first, Dodder Dynamoes and Marlaygades (Marlay/Renegades combo).
Both of these teams play premier division softball in Dublin.

First game against Dodder was very close, couldn't quite catch them, losing narrowly 7-5 in the end. Next up Marlaygades. This was a great performance by the team, we had them on the ropes and we took a 4 run lead into the last inning. Unfortunately Marlaygades just pipped us by one run, with a 3 run home run on 2 outs in bottom of the last. They went unbeaten for the day, winning out against Dodder in the final.

That was us more or less out of the running for the final. But we had 2 more games to try to get to 3/4th playoff, against Castleknock I and Castleknock II. Unfortunately we ended up losing both of these games and finished bottom. Still a positive start to the season.

Training starts tonight

Training starts tonight at 18:45 in the usual place.

See you there!