So Long Denver!
The action finished up for the Ohio Lasers Scarlet team on Saturday July 6th after a long night of softball the day before. You might remember in my last post I talked about how the last game went late into the night and was a heart breaker of a loss for the ladies after a really bad call by the officials.
They shook that loss off and started their day on Saturday with a 9 to 8 win over what I believe was a national team. Unfortunately, their luck didn't hold out and after a quite good game they suffered a 8 to 15 loss to a young but fast SWAT team.
I was talking to my niece about the game later and she said the girls and coaches from the SWAT team were really cool. That made the loss a bit easier to take. It was interesting be cause when the two teams faced each other, it was only the Lasers second game of the day, but it was SWATs fifth game of the day.
One of the Lasers coaches at one point told the ladies "don't tell me your tired, this is their fifth game today, there is no way you are more tired than them". It lit a fire, but unfortunately, it was a bit too late.
Like I said though, SWAT was a good team and I don't think the ladies minded losing to them as much as they did the team the night before.
The good news is, even though the Lasers were done after this loss, the SWAT team still had to play another game. Against that Rogue team that I was just talking about. It was another long game for them, but SWAT ended up winning and knocking those Rogue jerks out of the tournament as well. Talk about poetic justice.
I don't know how SWAT ended up finishing the tournament, but it was a real joy to watch them play, even if they beat my Lasers.
It actually brings up something else I saw after the tournament was over. Since I follow my niece on X (Twitter), I also see a lot recommended posts from other players and coaches. There was a coach who said something to the effect of no player should ever have to play more than five games in one day.
After watching SWAT play six games in one day in some pretty hot weather, I totally agree with that. It was very hot while we were in Denver. Hotter than I thought it was going to be. The humidity was low, but it was still hot.
Add to that the increase elevation and these ladies who are in much better shape than I am were struggling. We had to sit one of our ace pitchers in the last game because she was dealing with altitude sickness. It was brutal. Add to that the fact that these games were 110 minutes where most games are usually 70 minutes or so and these ladies were pushing themselves to the limit.
Then imagine doing that six times. At 110 minutes per game, the ladies from the SWAT team spent 11 hours playing softball in one day. That's brutal! Even at the university level athletes don't play that many games in one day. They usually cap it to something like two or three.
I'm not saying we need to make it easier, but we need to be more mindful of the stress we are putting on these ladies and if we want them to continue to play and love the game, this needs to be a priority.
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