Good start, rough end for Thunder at softball national championships
By Medicine Hat News on July 29, 2017.
Medicine Hat News A year older and with plenty more confidence, Medicine Hat’s Thunder softball team entered Little League junior nationals this week in Calgary with a bang. They finished up, however, with a whimper. The 14- and 15-year-old girls went 2-3 in the tournament, beating a Saskatchewan team 11-5 Monday and Alberta’s Elnora 16-6 Tuesday. Then things fell apart with mercy rule losses to a team from B.C. Tuesday (19-2), Elnora in Wednesday’s semifinal (17-7) and finally to the same Saskatchewan team in Thursday’s bronze medal game (16-6). “We played so well the first two games,” said coach Scott Kelly, whose club first played in nationals last year and lost to the only other team which entered. “We didn’t play well enough to win.” The good news is seven of the 10 players are young enough to return next year. There would’ve been 11 this year but on the eve of the event one player wound up having an emergency appendectomy. The Thunder are a rare group that’s dual-registered in both Little League and Softball Alberta, allowing them to compete in multiple championships. They were third at Softball Alberta’s under-16 C championships earlier in the month. 9-8
