Jay Sabatello
The PebbleCreek women’s softball team, now called the Desert Diamonds, traveled to Liberty Field in Sun City West on April 15, to take on the Sun City West (SCW) women’s team known as the Hot Flashes.
As you sports fans may remember, the Hot Flashes played here last month against the Diamonds, where our local women swept the double header. Vowing to even the standings, the Flashes challenged our Diamonds to April’s double header.
For those of you who’ve heard the term “home field advantage,” it seems to be applicable to both of these squads as the Flashes, playing at home, swept our Diamonds 17-6 and 14-3.
The scores, however, aren’t indicative of the caliber of play that was witnessed by the nearly 100 fans from PebbleCreek who traveled to SCW to cheer on their Diamonds. Throughout both contests, the women played with amazing enthusiasm and communication despite only being together as a club for two months and just fielding talented rookie pitcher Bridget Trujillo.
The first game opened with Theresa Meyers and Barb Camozzi both ripping singles through the infield, followed the next inning with singles from Dawn Hangen, Pam Wallace, Cami Davis, and Diann Owen. The highlight of that inning was the double ripped to center field by Sandra Kraft.
The Flashes answered back in both innings with seven hits across both frames, bringing in eight runs.
The third inning saw our home squad light up the field with five hits and three runs, including doubles blasted between the outfielders by Karen Long and Lori Adair. This was followed by a crushing drive to left center field by Theresa Meyers, sending the Flashes’ outfielders scurrying to the wall for the ball as Meyers glided into third with a triple, adding to the three triples she hit during the double header here last month. Unfortunately, dear fans, the remainder of the game saw our Desert Diamonds score only one more run as the Hot Flashes kept up their relentless hitting and scoring.
Our Desert Diamonds started off the second game of the twin bill with five hits, including doubles from Dawn Hangen and Barb Camozzi, and singles added by Karen Long, Lori Adair, and Maureen Strachan. Those batters pushed across three runs for an early lead.
However, the Flashes, fielding their tournament level team in this series were again on a hitting streak as their players stroked hit after hit.
As the Diamonds discovered, many of the tournament players on the Hot Flashes were very fast runners requiring our infielders to quickly snag grounders and fire to first base to beat them. On two separate plays, first baseman Sandra Kraft made incredible stretches of MLB quality to field short throws and register the outs.
The Diamond’s bats came alive in the second game with nearly every player driving the ball hard, but the Flashes’ fielders seemed to be everywhere snagging hit after hit, including the two long fly balls slugged by Cami Davis to the outfield.
With both teams having swept a double header, you might ask, “What’s next?” Well, get ready for a four-team, round-robin playoff in December of 2022. Play ball!