MVLA Nova

FallBall Is Coming! Team Formation Day

Open Tryouts

 8/23/08!

Thanks to all of the softball die-hards who have indicated their interest in our upcoming Fall Ball season. Fall ball team formation drills will be held on Saturday, August 23rd at Stevenson Park in Mountain View, CA. All players are expected to attend. There will be various “scrimmages”, so the girls should come “game ready”.

The schedule is as follows:

 

Girls born 1996 or later 10:00 – 12:00

Girls born 1995 or earlier 1:00 – 3:00

We plan to play 3-5 tournaments during the months of September and October. Most of these tournaments will be in Fremont and Hayward. The cost for fall ball will be $200.00 per player.

Based on the responses received to date, we expect to be fielding the following teams:

• 10U-B – head coach TBD

• 12U-B – head coach Alan Lundberg

• 14U-A – head coach Pepe Hinojosa

• 13/14U-B – head coach John Parks

• 16U-B – head coach Terry McHugh

 

Breaking News!

 

10U Red wins Santa Clara Pal Tournament

 

Yes, it's true!  10 U Red won the Santa Clara Pal tournament at Mission College this weekend in a gut-wrenching international tie-breaker.  We mercy-ruled the other teams that we played earlier in the weekend, except for this team that we played in the championship, which we lost to yesterday.  But today we came out really strong and the girls played their hearts out!  They really wanted to win this last tournament.  We played 7 innings and were tied 1-1.  We only played 1 inning of the tie breaker and scored to win the game! It's great to go out with a "bang"! 

 

 

14U’s place 3rd in Pleasanton

Submitted by John Parks
Although we would have loved to say differently, we didn't win a trophy on Sunday. We lost in the semifinal 5-0.
It was really a "dog fight" and had a lot of every kind of high jinks imaginable! Coaches relaying locations to the batter, cheap shots on the players (Lindsay, Jennie, Tiffany, Tina and Britt took big collisions on the bases), and lots of attempts at intimidation. It made the San Carlos game look tame.
The umpiring, as in the game before, was not very good. When Lindsay was steamrolled at first (she is going to have her wrist checked in a few days) the umpire at the base said it was a “clean hit". This, even though the 3rd base umpire (yes, we had three umpires!) had a much better view and thought it was on purpose and avoidable. The first base umpire would not accept help and wouldn't issue a warning. The third base umpire, to his credit, did so independently (he is on his way to the ASA Nationals and had little tolerance for the guy on first).
The opposing team probably averaged 150 lbs per player. Big girls but we had a better defense. If we play them 10 times, I think we would have beaten them 8 of those games. However, they started picking our players off one by one. Our girls hung in there and were never intimidated. Still, no trophies or purple hearts! Better luck next time!

 

12U-W Represents NOVA at State Championships

 

Submitted by Alan Lundberg

Thanks to the Nova board for their support in getting the new NOVA banner and trading pins for our trip. It was a real hit with the kids.

The opening ceremonies were out of this world! The MC’s were able to read the MVLA NOVA name from our banner to around 30,000 folks in the stands. The kids had a great time although our results weren't what we had hoped for.

In looking at many of the teams playing, I felt we had a pretty good chance to do very well if not win it all. The problem was that the first team we faced won the tournament last year and had a pitcher that threw the speed of Ali Goldberg (52-55 mph) with a cutter and rise ball to boot. We hung in there but lost 12 - 4.

We won the second game handily 11 - 2, but then had to face the winner of the Norcal’s this year and the only team to beat us at that tournament (out of 19 teams)

We had them 6 - 2 all the way until the last inning when they came back and beat us by 1 run. So it was heart breaking but incredible all at the same time. We were glad we went, even though we had a difficult draw facing 2 top seeds.