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Washington wins slow pitch softball again; Mt. Pleasant 4th
Mt. Pleasant gets Sportsmanship Award
CASCADE — The Washington team won the Knights of Columbus slow-pitch softball state tournament again.
Washington faced five teams on the way to the tournament title and went 5-0 over the course of the two-day tourney, played Saturday and Sunday.
The tournament was not played last year because of the pandemic, but the Washington team also won state the previous year.
The tournament triumph sends the Washington winners to the national tournament in Columbia, Missouri, during Labor Day weekend.
Four of the five games ended early because Washington was so far ahead, the 10-run rule came into play.
However, the first game the team played in the tournament was not so easy. It was a single run win 17-16 over Cedar Falls. Washington prevailed despite the fact that the tying run was on base and the winning run was at the plate for the opponent. The next four games were runaway wins over Cascade I, Cascade II, Mt. Pleasant and Houghton.
A slow pitch softball tournament has the regulation where the pitch had to be a minimum of six feet high and no more than 12 feet high.
Another rule was that only five home runs per team per game were allowed. The sixth home run and each subsequent one is an out.
“There were a lot of home runs hit, a lot,” Washington coach and manager Steve Roth said. "You certainly get a lot of grief if you had a solo shot.“
There is a lot of consternation over solo home runs with such a rule. Ideally a team wants to save its home runs for when there are two or three people on the bases.
“We got a lot of outs, hit a lot out over the two days,” Roth said. “I think we might’ve had two solo home runs.”
Roth said there were actually three 10-run rule games, “Because we got 20 runs on Mt. Pleasant.”
Mt. Pleasant was the winner of the sportsmanship award.
“We hit the ball very well, and we played really good,” Roth said. “We have some 30-year-olds on the team and then there are the 22-, 23-, 24-year-olds that are the ones responsible for the home runs.”
The Washington Knights of Columbus team won the state's slow pitch tournament Saturday and Sunday in Cascade with five game victories, four by the 10-run rule. (Photo submitted)
The Mt. Pleasant Knights of Columbus team won the sportsmanship award at the state's slow pitch tournament Saturday and Sunday in Cascade and finished fourth as a team. (Photo submitted)
