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In the News: Registration: January 19-20, 2010 The Kiwanis Girls Fastpitch Association is accepting registration for the 2010 season. Sign-ups will be held January 19th and 20th at the Napa High cafeteria from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The program is open to girls who are ages 13 to 19, or are finishing their last year of ‘A’ ball at the Junior Girls level. Fees for the 2010 season are $95 for the first child or $75 for the second. Softball experience is not required. Early registration can be completed by contacting Glenn Johnson at 649-8473 or 342-0896. Rally propels Bicycle Works Knudsen helps her team capture Seniors crown... Keep the pressure on, and you never know what will happen.
MI&V appeared it would pull out a 3-2 win when, with two outs in the
top of the seventh, its left fielder had to run toward Brittany
Savin’s fly ball but couldn’t hang onto it.
That brought up Luie Knudsen (2-for-3), who had singled in her previous two at-bats, and MI&V pitcher Sarah Halsey walked her in five pitches to load the bases.
Halsey — who had thrown two-hit, shutout ball for the first four
innings — then lost the handle on two wild pitches to Trisha Towne.
Bicycle Works scored on both of them for a 4-3 lead. Towne drove in
another with an RBI single up the middle, before MI&V finally got
the third out.
Knudsen then wrapped up her seven-hitter with a 1-2-3 seventh that included her ninth strikeout.
“I can’t believe we came back with that last-inning rally,” the 2009
Vintage High graduate said. “It’s unbelievable.”
Asked if she could believe what a gift her team got with the seventh-inning error, Knudsen said “It’s rec ball” — though her own team struggled with “rec” play in the early going. Hailey Manning led off the bottom of the third for MI&V with a walk and scored three errors later for a 1-0 lead. In the fourth, Anna Marie Scaduto and Sarah Halsey (3-for-3) opened with back-to-back singles, pulled off a double steal, and got a run on a Knudsen wild pitch to make it 2-0. The game got more tense once Bicycle Works began to figure out Halsey’s lower-velocity but moving pitches. Colie Beltran led off the fifth with a double to left-center. One out later, Savin ripped an RBI double off the fence in left, cutting MI&V’s lead to 2-1. Savin then tried to score on a single by Knudsen (2-for-3), but center fielder Paige Logan ended the inning by nabbing her with a strike to the plate. Knudsen and Co. retired MI&V in order in the bottom of the fifth, however, then tied the score 2-2 in the sixth. Towne opened with a walk, took third on Jackie Zimmer’s misplayed bunt, and scored on Maryanna Valenzuela’s RBI groundout. But Halsey ended that threat by grabbing a line drive and doubling off Zimmer at second base. With new momentum, MI&V rallied back ahead in the sixth. A collision in the outfield led to a dropped fly ball, and another Halsey single led to a two-out, RBI bunt single by Logan and a 3-2 MI&V lead. “We were trying to make things happen,” MI&V coach Tom Norris said. But Beltran (2-for-4) got Bicycle Works going in the seventh with a one-out single, sparking the winning rally. “I came into the game a little out of it,” said Beltran, who said coach/league president Dale Rosemeyer motivated the team in what might have been his last NVGFA season. “I was thinking it could be Dale’s last year and I wanted us to turn it around. It was nerve-wracking out there.” Morgan Duarte had a hit for MI&V. Cantu added a hit for Bicycle Works, which finished the regular season with a league-best 11-4 record to earn the No. 1 seed. MI&V coach Tom Norris said his team made too many errors for a Senior Division championship game. “When you get up to this level, you need to stay focused,” said the 30-plus-year veteran of NVGFA coaching. “But we were missing a couple of key players. I’m happy with our team. We’ve played Bicycle Works for the championship seven times since 2000 and we won three years ago, but Dale’s just a good coach.” Celebrating 60 years!
After six decades, the Napa Valley Girls Fastpitch Association
doesn’t have the only summer games in town for teenage girls
anymore.
Many are playing for traveling softball teams or with high school volleyball or basketball teammates in summer leagues, or attending sports camps.
Yet the NVGFA was introducing yet another 11 teams of some 180
players during its 60th Opening Day ceremonies on Saturday at
Napa Kiwanis Park.
“Girls are spread out in many new venues that we didn’t have before, so it keeps us on our toes to find creative ways to make sure we have enough girls involved in our league,” said NVGFA president Dale Rosemeyer, back at the helm for the first time since 1999 to 2002. “It’s a credit to all the managers and coaches and people who go out and find girls to play, because this is a great sport that teaches so many character-building elements for their lives.”
The first pitch was thrown out by Lynn Nichols, president of
Kiwanis Club of Napa. She played softball in the East Bay, not
in the NVGFA, according to Rosemeyer. But he said the club she
governs acquired the park 60 years ago and has been allowing
NVGFA to play on it ever since.
“It’s a joint venture between Kiwanis Club of Napa and the City of Napa Parks and Recreation division, which does a great job of taking care of and watering the grass for us,” Rosemeyer said. “They both keep our league running the way it does.”
The NVGFA’s players are from not only Napa but also American
Canyon, St. Helena, Sonoma and Calistoga.
Rosemeyer, whose 27-year-old daughter Tammy played in the league as a teenager, is back for his 13th season as a manager with Bicycle Works of the Junior Division. The team became the first to string together five straight NVGFA titles earlier this decade, and finished second to Fazerrati’s in 2008. Sharon Burns, who is back for her ninth straight year umpiring NVGFA games, was the first woman president of the league. She played in the league from 1972 to 1977, then coached for eight years while her two daughters were in it. If anyone knows how special it is having an chance to play softball, it’s Burns. Until her senior year at Vintage High in 1976-77, there was no Crushers softball program. She and some friends gathered signatures on a petition to show the principal that there was interest in the sport and, in the spring of 1977, the school field its first team. Ironically, Burns didn’t play on it because she had graduated in January. When she played in the NVGFA, it wasn’t split into younger and older divisions. “When you came up as a 13-year-old, you were hitting 18-year-old pitching,” she recalled. “You kinda rode the bench unless you had the ability to take an older kid out of her position. But the girls back then were, as a whole, a little more equal in ability than they are now because there were no pitching coaches, hitting coaches or (traveling teams). I would have loved having those because I really loved softball. “They didn’t have uniforms for the younger girls, either. I wore my big psychedelic pants with a T-shirt. They didn’t have that fence with the sponsors’ signs on it, either. When a homer was hit, it was actually hit into this lady’s backyard in left field and she had a big German Shepherd, so it stayed there.” She said she continues to umpire because it keeps her feeling young and because of the league’s positive vibe. “I don’t do it for the money. I do it because I can watch parents and coaches give the girls that wonderful energy and it’s a good thing to be part of,” she said, adding that she now has three granddaughters. “I hope to see them playing, too, and swinging at those pitches my daughter couldn’t lay off of.” |
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