Manning’s an all star

The January long weekend saw the region’s best softballers represent Mount Gambier at the South Australian Country Championships in Adelaide.

The team was well prepared and approached the weekend with a great attitude and gave it their all.

With a squad of 15 on the trip, it added great flexibility to really play hard and challenge the best South Australia had to offer.

Competing against A Grade city teams as well as regional teams, it proved to be a tough weekend with the heat and playing in nine games over the three days.

Friday came and went without securing a win against some really high-quality opposition metro teams.

Against Port Pirie it was more a story of not making the most of their chances in the batters box to pick up a breakthrough win.

On the Saturday the team came out firing, almost picking up a win in game one before pushing even harder to pick up two wins in a row to build some great momentum heading in the final days play.

Some consistent pitching and great team hitting proving the difference in those two games.

Sunday morning the girls played out of their skins to fall agonisingly short against one of the top teams in the tournament, playing their best game of the tournament yet falling just short at the end of the four inning game.

On to the final against Port Pirie at the end of Day 3 and it was a great start for the Mount girls with Lily Clifford-Finch who stole the show early with a home run that scored two putting Port Pirie under the pump early.

The game ebbed and flowed from there with not a lot of hitting to speak of from either team and two scoreless innings kept it at 2-0 in favour for the Mount.

Leyna Bruggemann was doing the job on the mound throughout the first three innings with the field keeping it tight in defence helped keep Port Pirie at bay until the top of the fourth when heir bats finally came alive by scoring five in the inning.

The Mount girls had their chances to come back however weren’t able to capitalise in mounting a comeback eventually going down 5-2.

Cody Manning (pictured far left with Maddie Redman) was the team’s best player for the weekend making the A grade women’s All Star team for the tournament with Sarah Polderman, Codie Jackway, Lily Clifford-Finch and Dana Jones proving to be the teams most consistent players through the weekend.