Season Review 2011

This season started early back in stormy November 2010 in the Galway leg of the IV's. And we got off to a good start, winning both the Plate and the inaugural Galway Championship against NUIG Base Invaders. Should also be noted that we almost caused an upset against the All-Ireland Champions here, the Limerick Originals, holding them to a draw in the round robin stages.

Flash forward to April 2011, the Limerick IV, in hot sunshine we reached a second consecutive plate final, losing out to the UL 55's in the end.

Season proper started then, first up our first participation in the "Niall Mellon Trust Charity Blitz" in Castleknock College, kept up our run of final appearances here, winning the plate against the Renegades.

Next blitz was again in Castleknock at their invitational which we never miss. Due to our exploits in the previous blitz we were deemed strong enough for the competitive section. Held our own pretty well here going down by just 1 run in the semi finals to a Sluggers/BatPak mixed team.

In between the tournaments we also played our Munster League games, won 1 (or first in the munster league) and lost 1 against Cork and lost both against Limerick, so finished joint second with Cork in this.

This left the big tournament of the year, the IOST. We had only won a trophy once before at this way back in 2001. We put in good performances all weekend in this and battled our way to the final against a Renegades team. In a low scoring final we won out 3-0 in the end and claimed the Plate trophy.

Last but not least our annual MVP awards were presented at the end of the season. Winners for 2011:

Male MVP : Martinus Meela
Female MVP : Angelica Dooley

All in all a very successful season, lots of silverware, thanks to everyone who was part of it.

2011 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 Wednesday 31st August so get your votes in now. The awards will be presented at this years end of season party on Friday 2nd September.



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. Due to the number of guys that played this year to qualify for the Male MVP award you have to have played a minimum of 10 games this year.

Team with the trophy

Tribes bowl winning squad

Team picture

Tribes win the bowl

Last training session before the IOST this evening

Just a reminder that our last training session before the Irish Open is on this evening at 18.45 in the usual place

See you all later

IOST Final Squad & Details

Date : August 20/21 UL, Limerick

Squad:

Kevin Dooley, Kevin Doyle, John McG, Simon, Breandán, Colm, Andrew, Evan, Justin, Rob L, Martinus

Johanna, Angelica, Orla, Jacinta, Avril, Catherine, Marta (Sat only)

The majority of us will be travelling on the friday evening an staying in UL, we'll see the rest of you on Sat morning.

Round robin groups below, games will start at 9:30am on Saturday morning, teams register at 9am.

Full schedule will be available closer to date but expect an early start.

Group 1:

The Martyrs

Stingers

MOriginals

Bearcats

Marlay

Romers

All Sinners

Cork

Galway

Group 2:

Dodder Dynamos

Munster

Renemix

Kegs

2 Pak

Usual Suspects

Mizzfits

Wildcats

Belfast

Further Updates to follow...

Castleknock Invitational 2011 Review

Castleknock College, Sat July 9th, 2011

Squad

Kevin, Breandán, Colm, Diarmuid, Simon, Martinus, Steven, David, Turlough, Mark

Avril, Orla

Overview

9 teams entered this blitz this year, traditionally the format of this blitz is split into a Competitive Cup section for the stronger teams, and a Recreational Plate section for the weaker teams. Due to our seeding we were deemed strong enough to compete in the Cup section of this (after winning this at the previous blitz), good experience for us and a good measure of our ability, normally we would be in the recreational.

As can be seen from the squad above we were a bit short on girls, the rules allowed playing of 7-3, so we managed to borrow a girl for each game.

Round 1

There were just 4 teams in the Cup. First round was a round robin. First game was versus "Slackers", this was a team made up of players from the Premier Division Sluggers and the Div 1 Packers. This game didn't quite start on time so was shortened. Got of to a nervous start, shipping 5 runs in the first inning. Couldn't quite catch up and lost 5-3 in the end, one that got away.

Next game was versus Wild Kegs (made up of Premier Division Kegs and Div 2 Wildcats). We were cruising in this game, unfortunately we had a nightmare inning, shipping 8 or 9 runs, however we pulled it bag and won by 1 run in the end.

Next game was against Div 1 table toppers and favourites the local team, the Bearcats. They proved a little too strong for us and we were never in this game.

Results Rd 1

Galway 3 v 5 Slackers

Galway 11 v 10 Wild Kegs

Galway 1 v 12 Bearcats

Team P W L %

Bearcats 3 3 0 1.000

Slackers 3 2 1 0.666

Tribes 3 1 2 0.333

Kegs 3 0 3 0.000

Round 2

After finishing third, this put us into the cup semi final against the second placed Slackers. This game was played as a full 7 innings game. Very tight low scoring game, in the top of the last inning Galway were going in just one behind, managed to get bases loaded with 2 outs, but unfortunately next batter was to strike out meaning a narrow miss to the final.

After this a 3/4 place play/off was played out, Galway were never really troubled in this running out easy winners. So third place overall in the tournament, pretty good result.

Bearcats went on to win the Cup final.

Results Rd 2

Semi Final - Galway 8 v 9 Slackers

3/4 Playoff - Galway 16 v 9 WildKegs

Munster League Rd 1& 2

Date : Sat June 18th 2011

Venue: Laurel Park, Galway

Squad:

Kevin, John, Breandán, Colm, Evan, Justin, Steven, David

Johanna, Angelica, Orla, Avril

This was the first 2 games in the Munster League 2011. These were both full seven inning games.

Game 1

Game played with very, very windy conditions. Galway was the designated home team for Game 1. Quite a slow start by Galway, after 2.5 innings Core were up 7-0. Big rally in the bottom of the 3rd inning put Galway in the lead 8-7 after 3 innings. amazingly that was to be final runs of the game for either team with the final 4 innings remaining scoreless. Some strong headwinds and good defensive play by both teams kept the score down.

Game 2

Cork designated home for this game. Wind remained strong for this, although it was played in more pleasant sunny weather. Galway ran up a comfortable lead in this, after 5.5 innings, the score was 2-11 in favour of Galway. However Cork were to draw level after 6 innings and the teams went into final inning neck and neck. Galway up first to bat, unfortunately failed to score. Cork then maintained there good batting form, getting there first 3 on base with no outs. So very difficult to defend the run from this situation and they got the winning run with the next batter.

Results:

Game 1 Galway 8 v 7 Cork

Game 2 Galway 11 v 12 Cork

Pictures, courtesy of Maciek here

GALWAY TRIBES TABLE QUIZ

Thursday June 16, 2011

8:00 pm

Oslo Bar, Salthill

€40 per table

Spread the word...

Niall Mellon Trust Plate Winners 2011

Niall Mellon Trust Charity Blitz

Castleknock College, Dublin

Squad:

Kevin, Simon, Breandán, Martinus, Turlough, Steven, David, Mark Doheny

Angelica, Jacinta, Orla, Marta

Review

Round 1:

On a nice but very windy day we took part in this charity blitz for the first time. 8 teams took part. 2 groups of 4 team played a round robin for the first round. First game got out of the blocks pretty well against the Renegades winning easily. Next up Marlay, very tight defense from Marlay never let us into this game. Next the local team the Bearcats, couldn't get to grips with the strong wind against the bats in this game, although we defended pretty well , just didn't get enough hits. This left us 3rd in group and into plate semi finals.

Results:

Tribes 10 v 4 Renegades

Tribes 3 v 13 Marlay

Tribes 2 v 8 Bearcats

Group A Standings:

Team W L %

Marlay 3 0 1.000

Bearcats 2 1 0.666

Tribes 1 2 0.333

Renegades 0 3 0.000

Plate Semi Final:

Here we played against the bottom team from group B, Belfast Aviators. The batting in this game really came together and could have won by a lot more if we had more people on base when the home runs came in (5 altogether in this game). So into another Plate final in Castleknock.

Result:

Tribes 10 v 5 Belfast Aviators

Plate Final

This was to be against the Renegades who we had already beaten earlier. Much different game here, close all the way through with little to separate us. After last inning the game was tied 7-7. so we played an extra inning. Top of the inning Renegades batting and we got 3 outs pretty quickly with no runs scored. So jus t1 run needed to win. Good start with first 2 batters with base hits, so runners on 1 and 2 with no outs. Next batter also a base hit but an overthrow at 3rd meant the runners advanced giving us the run we needed.

Well done to all who took part.

Also Sluggers won the Cup, they remained undefeated throughout the day. We had a small part to play in this to, David playing for them in semi-final as they were short.

Result:

Tribes 8 v 7 Renegades

Provisional Fixture List

See here :

https://sites.google.com/site/galwaysoftball/calendarofevents2011 or click link on side panel.

Some of these are subject to change and there is a possibility of a few more.

Limerick Intervarsity April 9/10 2011 Review

Squad:

Kevin, John McG, John H, Rob L, Ronan, Evan, Andrew, Justin, Martinus

Jacinta, Johanna, Angelica, Marta, Orla

Just 6 teams this year. It was always going to be tough for us to win anything here with 3 very strong teams competing. Considering we were going in cold without much practice we put in a decent showing.

Group stage:

Started off well in the morning with a comfortable win over UCD2. Next 2 games we were comfortably beaten by the 2 Limerick teams. Final match of the day was against a mix of players from both UCD and UL. Probably should have won this one, ended in a draw, but a pretty exciting game nonetheless.

Results:

Galway 16 v 8 UCD2

Galway 3 v 25 UL 55's

Galway 5 v 15 Limerick Originals

Galway 9 v 9 UCD/UL Mix

Galway 3 v 16 UCD1

Table:

Team P W D L

Originals 5 4 0 1

UCD1 5 4 0 1

UL 55's 5 3 0 2

Galway 5 1 1 3

UCD2 5 1 0 4

UL/UCD 5 0 1 4

Knockout Round:

Finishing fourth in the group stage, still left us in the hunt for the cup in a bit of a complicated system. Anyways in glorious sunshine we lost to UL 55's for the second time, this meant we dropped into the Plate final. In the final we held or own for the first 4 or 5 innings, the Originals pulled away towards the end so the scoreline in this one is a little skewed and these guys are the All Ireland Champions after all.

UCD1 won the Cup and with it won the overall Intervarsity competition for the year.

Results:

Playoff : Galway 3 v 18 UL 55's

Plate Final: Galway 3 v 20 Limerick Originals

Training starting again

Training is starting again on Wednesday 6 April at 6:45 in Laurel Park (map).

Hope to see you all there.