Well, things didn't go the way we had hoped last night. The Coffman ladies were set to face off against the Bradley Jaguars who run ruled them in their last meeting. You might remember me talking about the fact that the parents were absolutely out of control from the Bradley team.
I was slightly impressed to find out that last night the lady who had been the most egregious in their childish behavior actually apologized to my brother in law for the way she had acted at the previous game.
Add to that the fact that my nieces team had a 1 to 0 lead through most of the game and it was looking like it was going to be a pretty good night.
Then everything went off the rails. They scored some runs, we scored some runs, they scored some more runs and before you know it, we are looking at a 4 to 4 tie game going into the seventh inning.
Here's the thing, this Bradley team is undefeated this season in conference play and they were willing to do absolutely anything to ensure they got the win. Even to the point of cheating and coercing the officials into making questionable calls.
Here's how it went down. My niece is at bat, the count is something like two and two. Suddenly, she gets hit by a pitch, so the official behind home plate tells her to take first base. Meanwhile, the coach from the other team comes out and starts talking to the officials. After a long discussion they tell her to come back.
According to the other coach, she leaned into the ball that hit her. As you can see from her posture in the photo above, my niece doesn't lean into anything. She's a slugger, she wants to hit the ball, not get hit by the ball.
So she flies out, next batter comes up, hits a double. My niece has the speed that if she had still been on first base, she would have easily scored and won the game. Clearly I am a bit biased, but there was also clearly some underhandedness going on. For the most part the parents were actually pretty decent I think but the opposing coach is trash and should be investigated as far as I am concerned.
I'd also like to say shame on the officials for allowing yourselves to be bullied into changing what you knew was the right call to begin with.
So the game goes into nine innings and Bradley wins 7 to 4. That's 7 to 4 with an asterisk in my book though. Sure the Shamrocks had other opportunities where they could have won and didn't take advantage of them. It's one thing to lose fairly and another to lose due to some shadiness. That's a lot harder to take.
I'm likely going to be salty for quite some time over this. Thankfully my niece is a better person than me and she will probably shake it off much sooner.
Meanwhile, her older sister's team has what might be the last four games of their season this weekend.
They have a double header against Ursuline University today and then a double header against Lake Erie University tomorrow. They need to win out all these games to be able to make it to the conference tournament.
The Rocks are back in action Monday.
It's gonna be another weekend full of softball!
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