Blazzers & Bearcats take the spoils at Castleknock

The sun shone brightly this year for the Castleknock Softball Club Annual Blitz on Saturday 8th July. Again we welcomed teams from Galway and Belfast as well as established Dublin clubs such as Marlay, Renegades, Suspects, Blazzers and Sluggers, Packers, Kegs.

The Belfast Aviators decided to get a head start and arrived in Dublin on Friday evening to be greeted by a number of Castleknock players for a few drinks. We decided to give them a lie in on Saturday morning as the rest of the teams took to the filed for 10am game start.

Due to an odd number of teams this year we had to form Cup and Plate competitions from the start. The Plate saw five teams competing as follows: Aviators, Blazzers, Marlay, Renegades and Suspects. After group games were completed we were left with a final between Renegades and Blazzers. After an exciting game Renegades who were unbeaten in the group games were defeated by a revived Blazzers who had recovered from a couple of blips in their group games. Suspects beat Marlay to take third position with the Aviators coming fifth.

The Cup had Bearcats, Wild Kegs (Wildcats and Kegs), Slackers (Packers and Sluggers) and the Tribes from Galway in a four team tournament.

Rivalries were high with Castleknock v Castleknock in the first game as Bearcats defeated the Wildcats/Kegs combination. This group of teams were evenly matched with Bearcats and Slackers reaching the final, having defeated Wild Kegs and Tribes respectively in the semi finals (the second time pitting Castleknock players against each other).

The final was a hard fought tight game with Bearcats and Slackers matching each other inning by inning at the start. Bearcats struck first blood pulling away 7-2 in the 4th inning. Slackers bravely fought back, however Bearcats hung on to win the game 10-7 in the end.

Throughout the day we ran a male and female MVP competition with each team nomination players from each game. This was a very open competition with many players from all teams being put forward which was looking like turning into a headache for me with no clear winners. That is until the afternoon games were completed leaving me with two clear winners emerging from the pack of nominees. Ciara Roe from Sluggers had a great day both hitting and fielding narrowly took the female award over Linzi of Belfast Aviators who also played well during the day. Ian Priestley from Sluggers stole the show picking up the MVP award in a whopping four out of five games he played in. He played fantastic and fully deserved the prize.

Overall the day was a great success. Everyone had a good time and Bearcats will wait to see who wants to take the title from them next year.

Alan O'Rafferty