A
huge congrats to the London Lightning Bantam who competed this past weekend in
the Provincial Championships co-hosted by London Lightning Fastball &
Palmerston Marlins, U16 & U19 teams.
Game 1, Lightning set the tone to the game vs Aurora Diggers; Neubrand led off the bottom half of the inning with a home run over the fence to straight away centre, she followed that up with a home run over the fence to left centre with her third at bat. Shiell threw the 7 innings, 101 pitches, 76 of them for strikes, sitting down 10 batters.
Lightning then faced Windsor Wildcats in the afternoon tilt. Bantam’s were looking for some revenge for the 11-1 loss suffered to the Wildcats at qualifiers two weeks prior.
Fans were certainly not disappointed, and revenge is what Lightning got! Starting up the offence in the top of the first with 5 runs. Wildcats struck back with 2 runs in the bottom of the third, but that did not stop the Lightning offence, tallying 1 in the fourth inning, 4 in the fifth and 6 in the top of the 7th to hold on for a 16-3 win. Shiell continued to fire at batters, throwing 106 pitches, 74 of them for strikes only allowing 1 earned run all game.
Neubrand extended her home run hitting streak with another over the fence to left centre mid-way through the game.
In the final round robin game on Saturday afternoon vs the Kingston Cobras, Lightning kept the offence going in the third. They went down 2 in the bottom half of the first till the fourth inning with bases loaded, 2 outs, Neubrand decided to hit another long bomb to straight away centre, turning the tide of the game in the favour of the Lightning 4-2, adding a run in the fifth, 3 in the sixth. Kingston rallied back with their own string of hits, scoring 8 runs in the bottom half of the sixth giving them the lead and not looking back.
Lightning finished the round robin with a 2-1 record and entered the quarter final round with 33 runs for and 11 against.
The team faced a familiar opponent, Springfield Brewers 02’. The Lightning were down 2-0 heading into the top of the 5th when a Lightning storm rolled in and the offence exploded with 9 runs in the inning started by Reidy with a double to left centre. Lightning offence sent 14 batters to the plate in that inning. Lightning allowed one more run in the 6th but held on for the win, sending them into the semi-finals and guaranteeing two games Sunday.
Sunday brought more solid offence in a batter’s duel with LaSalle 03, both teams had 16 hits each, but it was the one extra run for the Lightning that edged out the Athletics in the end, sending the Lightning to the gold medal game and punching their ticket to Eastern Canadians.
A London Lightning storm did everything they could to spark the offence one more time but fell short to Springfield Brewers 03’ 10-0.
London Lightning Bantams will be recharging their bats and fine tuning their D before heading to Cole Harbour, NS. The coaching staff could not be prouder of these young ladies who scored a total of 47 runs all weekend and battled right till the end. We are all busy now planning our departure to represent London and Ontario August 23-26 in Cole Habour, NS.
GO LIGHTNING!
By: Coach Chris