Two Summit Girls Fastpitch Softball Teams Win Cranford Fall Championship

The following was submitted by John Calabrese:

Summit's 8U team won the Cranford Fall Travel Championship, after starting the season 1-2. At that point the girl’s offense and defense took over. Winning their last 5 games they finished the regular season at 6-2. Their positive momentum propelled them into the playoffs winning 3 games to advance to the finals against unbeaten Westfield.  

The fans erupted as Summit took the early lead in the first inning. Things got interesting during the next inning when their opponents battled back. After a few silent middle innings of good defensive play from both sides, Summit's bats woke up and kept them ahead. Their strong defensive play in the last inning carried them to an incredible 8-5 victory.   

Summit's 10U Maroon Softball Team captured the Cranford Fall Travel 10U Title with an 11-0 undefeated record. Summit advanced to the championship game with a 14-3 win over the Cranford. Summit trailed for the first time all Fall when Cranford put a run on the board in their half of the first inning.  

Summit responded with 2 runs in their half of the first and added a run in the bottom of the 3rd for a 3-1 lead. In Cranford’s top of the 4th, they cut into Summit’s lead to trail 3-2.  Summit then responded with 8 runs by sending 14 batters to the plate in their half of the 4th to take an 11 – 2 lead and never looked back from there.  Each team scored again to end the game 14-3 in Summit Maroon’s favor to send Summit Maroon into the championship against the Westfield Blue team. 
       
In the Championship game, fans saw a well played game by the Summit and Westfield Girls.  Summit put a 2 spot up in the first to lead 2-0 after 1 inning.  Westfield rallied in the 2nd inning to cut the Summit lead in half, but left the bases loaded to waste an opportunity to add more.  Summit added to their lead in the 3rd inning with 3 hits to score 3 runs and take a 5-1 lead after 3 innings of play.  Westfield would not go away adding a run in the 4th and 5th inning to cut the Summit Maroon lead to 5-3.  Summit added a run in their half of the 5th to double the lead to 6-3 and set up the drama for the Westfield 6th.  Westfield started the 6th with 2 walks to put runners on 1st and 2nd.  The next batter grounded out to advance the runners a base.  The next batter for Westfield walked to load the bases bringing the go ahead run to the plate with 1 out.  Summit Maroon’s pitching bared down and struck out the final 2 batters leaving the tying runs stranded giving Summit Maroon the Cranford 10U Fall Travel Championship.  

For the majority of the Summit Maroon girls, this was back to back Cranford Fall Travel Championships, as they won as 8U in Fall 2012 and moved up to 10U for Fall 2013 

Attached are the two team pictures. 

For the 8U: 
Front row, Left to Right: Amanda Brown, Samantha Mercurio, Hope Basaman, Jennifer Natunen, Thea Rind, Lizzy Washburn, Victoria MacArthur, Anna Creel, Kara Regner. 
Middle row: Maddie MacPherson, Kate Whitcher, Rebekah Thompson, Kelsa McKern, Zoe Regner.   
Coaches, Lori Natunen, Juli Thompson, Marc Rind, Andrew MacPherson, Stephen Brown, Brian MacArthur   

For the 10U: 
Front row, Left to Right: Kaitlyn Weiss, Sydney Limmer, Gabrielle Guidetti, Ava Calabrese, Megan Tarashuk 
Middle row, Jemma Nazarali, Kasey Walsh, Maggie Wilson, Rebecca Del Rosso, Abby Thompson, Madeline Murphy 
Coaches, Mike Walsh, Chris Tarashuk, Chris Wilson, John Calabrese, John Murphy