West Side 9/10s fall just short in championship

Kevin Pomeroy
Posted 7/29/14

It tried just about everything, but the Warwick West Side 9/10-year-old all-star softball team simply couldn’t figure out Cranston National Budlong’s Ava Brandow.

In a match-up of two teams …

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West Side 9/10s fall just short in championship

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It tried just about everything, but the Warwick West Side 9/10-year-old all-star softball team simply couldn’t figure out Cranston National Budlong’s Ava Brandow.

In a match-up of two teams with very little to separate them, Brandow made the difference, and on Wednesday night CNB captured the state championship with a 2-1 victory in the winner-take-all final game at Elmwood’s JT Owens Field.

Brandow struck out 13 West Side batters for her second complete-game victory in as many days. She gave up just five hits and walked three.

West Side, which had come out of the winner’s bracket and needed to lose twice in order to be eliminated, scored just two runs against Brandow and CNB in two games. On Tuesday, CNB won 6-1 before winning the whole thing the next night.

“I don’t give game balls out, but to go up there and win a game like this and pitch the way she’s been pitching, it’s unbelievable,” said CNB manager Tom Lewandowski of Brandow. “That girl is going to be something special. She is something special.”

CNB scored the eventual game-winning run in the fifth inning on an RBI double by Brandow, before West Side threatened one final time in the bottom of the sixth.

Maddy D’Amato led off the inning with a double to left field and took third on a wild pitch, putting the tying run on third base with nobody out.

“I’m thinking overtime,” said West Side manager Kevin Burr. “My brain is already going into the seventh inning.”

Brandow buckled down though and struck out No. 4 hitter Kelsey Burr for the first out of the inning, before Ashleigh Kidd put down a bunt in front of home plate that CNB elected to pick up and hold, keeping D’Amato at third. Kidd, however, never stopped running at first and continued on to second base, putting the potential winning run in scoring position.

“I wasn’t nervous if they tied it – alright, we’ll go into extra innings,” Lewandowski said. “But that other run, that was the big one.”

Neither of the runners ending up mattering. The next batter, Rachel Klekot, hit a pop-up behind home plate that CNB catcher Delaney Doidge made a lunging catch on for the second out of the inning.

D’Amato possibly could have tagged up and scored the tying run, but Kevin Burr held her at third.

One out from the win, Brandow finished the job herself by striking out Maddy Narcavage.

“I knew it would come down to who made the fewer mistakes, and it was them,” Burr said. “Hat’s off to them. They’re a good organization.”

CNB took a 1-0 lead right from the start, getting an RBI single from Brandow off of West Side starter Kelsey Burr in the top of the first. West Side immediately answered back, as D’Amato doubled and Burr knocked her in with a single in the home half of the inning.

But the scoring halted from there, as the game turned into a pitcher’s duel the rest of the way.

Burr gave up just five hits and struck out three over six innings of work, keeping her team in it from start to finish.

Yet West Side couldn’t find its offense no matter what. It routinely tried to bunt with the lower part of its order, but Brandow either blew the ball past the bat or, if the bunt was laid down, Doidge was able to pounce on it and get the out at first.

“We could try to get them off guard with the bunts,” Kevin Burr said. “If we could have gotten a few of them down then we could have come back and full swung, because they were expecting it.”

West Side put the leadoff runner on in the second and third innings, and got a runner as far as third base in the second on two wild pitches, but Brandow struck out the side with the go-ahead run just one stop away.

At the end of the day, it wasn’t for a lack of effort that West Side came up a little bit short.

“These girls fought,” Burr said. “ They would not give up. It was amazing.”

West Side’s run to the state championship game was made more improbable given the lack of all-star and travel ball experience on the roster, as most of the girls simply played recreation softball and then joined the summer all-star team.

This team here, we didn’t have that. It was just a couple of rec girls playing together and then joining an all-star team,” Burr said. “For them to come here and fight for a state championship without half the experience as their opponent, and half the skill, it says something.”

CNB advances to the 9/10 Eastern Regional in Old Forge, Penn., scheduled to start this weekend.

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