Lightning edge Terminators in U19 final

The Winnipeg Lightning edged the Smitty’s Terminators 3-2 in an all-Manitoba final at the under-19 western Canadian softball championship at Ashley Neufeld Softball Complex on Sunday.

The Lightning, which had Anna Forbes of Glenboro, U17 pickup Jade Campbell of Brandon and Brandon-born, Winnipeg-raised Madison Lyburn on their roster, went 5-1 in the round-robin and 2-1 in Sunday’s playoffs.

“That was amazing,” Lightning head coach Tracy Turner said. “That was the best part of it, to be able to play in Manitoba with the two Manitoba teams in the final. It couldn’t have worked out any better.”

And of course taking the gold home never hurts. Lightning pitcher Kenzie Dudeck, who earned the victory, said it was a great way to leave AAA softball.

“It’s cool,” Dudeck said. “I’m not playing next year so this is a good end, and I’ve never won gold in AAA before. It’s my first time.”

In the Page playoffs on Sunday morning, the Terminators dispatched the Lightning 9-1 in the 1-vs.-2 game to book a berth in the final. Meanwhile, the Ladysmith Chargers edged their provincial counterpart from B.C., the Langley Xtreme, 6-5 in the 3-vs.-4 matchup, setting up a semifinal between Winnipeg and Ladysmith.

It was tied 1-1 through five innings, but the British Columbians put across four runs in the top of the sixth inning to go up 5-1. Incredibly, Winnipeg rallied to tie it 5-5 in the bottom of the seventh.

In an extra inning, which was played under international rules where a runner is placed on second to start the inning, Ladysmith scored in the top of the frame only to have the Lightning strike for two runs in the bottom of the eighth to win 7-6.

“I don’t think in all of my playing days and then coaching for a long time, I’ve ever been part of anything like that,” Turner said. “The last thing I said to them when they came in was ‘We can do that too.’ And the pieces started to fall where they needed to fall. It was perfect. It was a storybook comeback.”

Ladysmith head coach Kris Kennedy said his club was thrilled with earning a medal.

“We’ve had kind of an up-and-down season all year,” Kennedy said. “We worked really hard and we’ve done it as a team all the way through. We made it through provincials and had some success there and were able to come to westerns as a group. We did really well. A bronze finish for us was more than we were expecting.”

They finished fourth in the AA league in B.C., but the first-place team didn’t commit to westerns, Langley finished second and the third-place team didn’t have enough players.

Manitoba sends its lower-ranked AAA teams to westerns, while Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia are represented by their top AA squads. The two Manitoba teams went 2-2 against each other in the regular season, with the Lightning winning both matchups at provincials but the Terminators emerging triumphant earlier on Sunday.

The Lightning got the start they wanted, stringing together three singles in the top of the first inning to go up 1-0. Smitty’s first hit came on a sharp comebacker up the middle that hit Dudeck in the leg an inning later. The hurler, who was clearly in some discomfort, took a walk to first base, talked to Turner for a moment and then tried a pitch.

“She walked away and I knew she was upset,” Turner said. “I didn’t know how bad it was because she took it in the shin. I think she felt better because she knew she could have a (practice) pitch and wasn’t going in cold after being hit. Once she threw it, she knew she was OK.”

Dudeck decided it was simply a case of mind over matter.

“You just need to keep going because there are three more possibilities you can get the outs,” Dudeck said. “I didn’t want it to affect me as a pitcher, because I didn’t want to let my team down.”

Judging herself to be OK, she then promptly struck out the next hitter.

“That regained a lot, and then the last out reassured me,” Dudeck said of her confidence. “I know my team has my back.”

The Lightning extended the lead in the top of the fifth inning when they parlayed a walk, two hits and an error into two runs to go up 3-0. If they thought they had the game salted away, Smitty’s hitter Laura Venton put that rest with one swing of her bat in the bottom of the seventh when she stroked a shot over the wall in left centre for a two-run homer that made it 3-2. Smitty’s put the tying run on base, but a ground out ended the game before they could cash in.

Smitty’s head coach Katherine Vigier liked what her players brought throughout the four-day event.

“I was super impressed with my team this weekend,” Vigier said. “We were on the bats, which was amazing and definitely helped us win a couple of games. Overall it was a great weekend. We got the wins in the round-robin, which helped us today, but we couldn’t come up with it in the final, which is OK. We played well and it was a tight game.”

On the winning side, Turner said it was a true team effort all weekend, which pleased her.

“We have 14 kids, and 15 with Jade, and they all were part of the win,” Turner said. “Nobody was down about anything, they were always engaged, it was a true team win for sure.”

Saturday was a challenging day for organizers, with a heavy downpour around noon that disrupted the proceedings, and then intermittent showers in the next hour. On top of that, safety rules dictate a half-hour stoppage when thunder is heard, and that happened three times.

On a day the final game was scheduled for 4:30 in the afternoon, the final out was made under the lights at 1:06 a.m.

Softball Brandon president and tournament organizer Marc Lyver said things went about as smoothly as they could have hoped with that many stoppages.

“It’s fantastic, all the compliments that our grounds crew have been able to get the diamonds up and running,” Lyver said. “They were so quick. We know what they can do here but it’s nice for them to showcase it to everyone else, and how effective they are in making things happen. We knew with the weather that we would get our games in for sure.”

As Lyver mentioned, their work certainly didn’t go unnoticed.

“The grounds crew was amazing,” Vigier said. “It was awesome to see so many people here doing their job, not just one or two. Everybody was really quick with it, so it was awesome. The facilities are amazing.”

Kennedy, who was visiting the complex for the first time, was also impressed.

“I thought the organizers did a really good job,” Kennedy said. “The field crew was amazing. It was sometimes frustrating with the smoke and the delays but the girls seemed to enjoy hanging out and meeting new players. It was good. I do want to thank the organizers and the umpires for doing the best they could. They did a really good job. “And of course the concession people and the field crew were fantastic. It was really well run.”

Lyver said it was a relief to play every game on the day it was scheduled — there was also significant rain on Friday — noting that wouldn’t be possible without some of the improvements made at the complex since it opened in 2017.

“Having a set of lights definitely makes things a lot easier,” Lyver said. “I think going ahead in the future, I think it’s actually time to think about that second set because then maybe your night is over at 11 instead of 1.”

Lyver said the coaches and players took the delays in stride, noting they understood that in many places the rain would have simply shut the diamonds down. Instead, the team of staff and volunteers persevered and got through some trying issues while the complex earned some new admirers.

“The facility is fantastic,” Kennedy said. “I love this. It’s easy to get to, the conditions and the fields are unbelievable, the girls loved it, I really thought everything was really accessible. I thought it was great. The night games were fun, it was really good. “You guys have a nice little complex here.”

pbergson@brandonsun.com