Final Day of Juniors

It has been a crazy week working at the fields! Thursday the weather decided to bring rain through Friday morning. The field crew, which I was a part of, was in charge of getting the fields ready. So we begin as it is still sprinkling on one field Friday morning only to have it downpour. So we decided to wait out the rain then start on the main field. When we finally get the main field ready around 12:30 it decides to downpour once again and again we played the waiting game. Fortunately by the third time we fixed the field the rain had decided to leave and 3 games were played starting at 4. It was nice to get so many thanks from the teams and fans for our efforts in getting the fields playable quickly. Something I had not seen used before to dry fields which worked surprisingly well was extra large sponges about 1 foot by 2 foot and 6 innches thick. They seemed to just attract the water and were a big p The bottom part of the tournament, the lower 7 teams ended up getting cancelled so the top 8 could get all their games in.

Semifinals are this morning as well as the 5th and 7th place games. France v. Spain for 7th is going on currently and Netherlands v. Slovakia is next. The semifinals are being played on the main field and Russia v. Italy are starting it off with Germany v. Czech Republic to follow. The winners/losers of those games will play for 1st/3rd place. Last night the night cap was Netherlands v. Russia and it was exciting to finally see a good softball game. If Russia won it put Russia, Netherlands, and Czech Republic in a 3 way tie, they did so the run difference decided the 2 teams to move on to play for the finals.

The atmosphere at these games is so electric, there is so much excitement in the air with the girls playing to represent their country. And not only are the girls very into the game the fans get very involved as well dancing to the songs between innings, leading cheers, and using many types of noise makers. I am excited to watch the games today and see who comes out on top. There is a very good chance there will be a first time winner this year (Netherlands and Italy have each won 5 times).

Cheers!