Bainbridge girls win state Little League softball championship
Published 2:13 pm Saturday, July 28, 2012
Nervous?
Nah.
Not on the outside, at least.
The Bainbridge Island All Star 10-11 girls softball team won the Washington State Little League Softball State Championship in its final matchup against Woodinville last week, and what a wild finish it was.
And if the girls were worried about getting out the woods with the win, after falling behind 6-0 across the first two innings in the championship game, the Bainbridge team was more composed than a Beethoven concerto.
The islanders unleashed a six-run rally in the top of the sixth to take a 10-7 lead, and Malia Peato then pitched a scoreless bottom of the sixth to seal the win.
“The girls did a really good job of keeping their composure,” said team manager Eric Wikstrom.
“We kept battling away and they chipped away at it.
It was probably one of the better strengths of our team; we’re able to put a bad situation behind us,” he said.
“I think our team plays a lot better when we have a lot of energy,” said Malia Peato, who led the Bainbridge hitters in the game and the district tournament.
“At the end of the game we were starting to cheer really loud and we were starting to get nervous, which gave us a lot of energy,” she said.
The big turnaround came in the third and fourth innings, Wikstrom said, when Hailey Capps came into pitch and held Woodinville to only one run.
That broke their momentum, Wikstrom said, and Bainbridge scored two runs across the third and fourth to pull the island girls to 7-4 at the bottom of the fifth.
Malia pitched a scoreless bottom of the fifth, then Bainbridge came up for the sixth-inning, crunch-time test and Malia took her place at home plate.
Natalie D’Amato recalled the scene: “It was great: There were two outs and one of our best hitters was up.”
Nervous eyes in the Bainbridge dugout looked everywhere but at home plate.
“Everyone was trying not to look, because there were two outs and the bases were loaded,” Natalie said. “We were just so nervous, we just didn’t want to look.”
“And she just smacked the ball … that’s when the dugout just exploded,” she said.
No surprise to her, she laughed.
“I was actually one of those who did look. I saw the whole thing.”
With the 10-7 advantage, Malia was magnificent on the mound, and held Woodinville scoreless until the end.
She led Bainbridge with two hits, two RBIs and two runs scored.
Malia finished the tournment with three wins as pitcher; Olivia Wikstrom was the winning pitcher in three games, as well.
Leading hitters for the tournament games were Natalie D’Amato (.750 batting average, nine runs scored, 10 RBIs), Malia Peato (.737, 13 runs, five RBI), Olivia Pells (.563, six runs, three RBI), and Olivia Wikstrom (.412, seven runs, six RBI).
The fantastic finish came after an undefeated run through the District 2 Tournament, with wins at Bainbridge’s Strawberry Hill Park: a 3-2 escape over Gig Harbor, a second 9-2 stop of Gig Harbor in the championship game, a sweep through the state tournament at Northshore Athletic Fields in Woodinville with a 7-5 victory over Woodinville, a 23-6 win over Auburn Kent, a 9-2 victory over Redmond before the final against Woodinville for the state championship.
Not everyone was worried that the Bainbridge team wouldn’t prevail in the end, though, and take the title.
Count Olivia Pells in that rarified group.
The team, after all, was down 5-0 against Auburn Kent and came back with a 23-6 mercy-shortened win.
“I was pretty confident. I wasn’t really worried about it,” she said.
The winning pitcher? Not so much.
“We had two outs and on the last batter, I was starting to get a little nervous,” Malia said.
“Then I threw that strike and it needed that game. I was just like really excited and happy, and that the game was over,” she said.
It was a total team effort, Natalie added.
“Some of the players that didn’t do too well during the normal games, they really came through and scored a lot of runs. I have to give a lot of credit to them for coming through,” she said.
