The true story of HEART, DETERMINATION, and RESILIENCE
from a teenage girl’s softball team with perhaps the
GREATEST COMEBACK IN ASA CHAMPIONSHIP PLAY HISTORY
They were not nice to us after they beat us in the 2001 SoCal State Tournament. In fact, they made us look bad by going back to the dugout before we even came out to home plate for the handshake. When we did go to home plate they refused to come back out and shake our hands. Afterwards on social media they claimed we were bad sports and even filed a complaint with SoCal ASA in an attempt to get us suspended, or at the very least, to distract us from our goal, which was to win another ASA national championship.
We were not poor sports. If we came out late it wasn’t on purpose. Thunder players were heartbroken by that loss and came off the field very slowly after that game. We had a very brief huddle like we always do and headed to home plate. We didn’t do anything different in that game than we did in any other game that season. One thought that crossed my mind was that they were trying to eliminate us from the competition at nationals since we had some pretty good luck against them in the past. We knocked them out of the 12U SoCal State Tournament in 1999, sent them to the loser’s bracket at the 12U National Tournament in 1999, and then we eliminated them from the 14U National Tournament in 2000i, in a loser’s bracket game late on Saturday night that advanced us to Sunday, and a top five finish in the tournament.
This possible attempt to undermine us came as a real surprise to me because over the years things had always been extremely cordial between us, although quite competitive. I am not sure if their actions had anything to do with a former San Diego Thunder player who was now with them, but either way their accusations against us were certainly out of line, unwarranted, and completely false.
Undaunted though, here we were at Arrowhead Park in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, on August 5th, 2001, at the site of the 14U ASA Class A National Championship Tournament. We were about to start our eighth consecutive game in two days, and our fourth straight game that day without a break. It was 4:30 in the afternoon, the temperature was over 100o F, the stands and outfield areas were packed with people, there was an ASA hearing pending against us for bad behavior at the State Tournament, and yes, we were facing a well rested and undefeated SoCal Crunch team, the same team that beat us in the SoCal State Tournament, called us poor sports afterwards, and who formally filed the complaint against us right after the State Tournament.
A few moments earlier we barely had enough energy to defeat Fresno Force in a stressful and nerve racking one-run nail biter of a game, 1-0. Right before that we hung on to defeat Salinas Storm, 3-2, in a tense and uneasy International Tie Breaker game, and before that, at 9 o’clock that morning we beat the Lilburn T-Birds, 9-0. We were on the field at 8 am that morning after finishing up the night before at close to midnight from a hard fought and pressure packed 1-0 escape over the USA Athletics in another physically and emotionally draining International Tie Breaker game, our fifth game of that day. We were currently resting in a tiny bit of shade we found close to the championship game field, stalling for time as we awaited the announcement of the championship game.
Thunder players were hot, tired, hungry, mentally drained, and physically exhausted, but the worst thing of all is that they knew they had to beat Crunch twice, not just once, but twice, to become national champions. Crunch was undefeated, fresh, well rested, and excited, and although we couldn’t see them from where we were, we could hear the enthusiasm in their voices as they warmed up on the championship field. The Thunder girls had very little left in their tanks, and the outlook for a championship appeared bleak, except for one mighty common and unified thread running between them,
WILL TO WIN.
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