AF wins softball championship

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Sarah Busch
  • Air Armament Center Public Affairs
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AFPN) --  The Air Force team won the 2003 Armed Forces Women’s Softball Championship held here Sept. 8 to 10.

“Our goal was not to go undefeated; it was to win the gold,” said Air Force head coach Master Sgt. William Hardy, from Keesler Air Force Base, Miss.

This is exactly what happened. The Army team defeated the Air Force 4-3 the first day of the tournament.

“That loss in our first game brought us back into reality,” Hardy said.

“From the beginning of the tournament, we were struggling with our hitting,” said second baseman Senior Airman Peni Nery from Kadena Air Base, Japan. “However, by the last game, we were showing everybody how we hit. We came through.”

The 10-run rule came into play for the airmen when they defeated the Navy team 16-4 in the last day of the tournament.

“We played a lot of good defense to keep us in the game until the offense came around,” Hardy said. “We had the best team, and the ladies played to their ability.”

The airmen dominated the entire game and pulled out of the sailors’ sight in the top of the sixth inning when Staff Sgt. Alicia Pagan, from Ramstein AB, Germany, hit a long ball out in left field, bringing in three runners to make the score 13-4.

Master Sgt. Wendy Hansen, from Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz.; Senior Airman Toni Owens, from Tyndall AFB, Fla.; and Senior Airman Latricia Munday, from Hickam AFB, Hawaii, each contributed an RBI to bump the score to 16-4.

The sailors were unable to retaliate and were shut out early in the bottom of the sixth inning with a final score of 16-4.

Going into this game, “I knew we had to play an errorless game in order to defeat the Air Force,” said Navy head coach Master Chief Petty Officer James Butters, from the Afloat Training Group at Naval Station Mayport, Fla. “However, we kept in there, and we fought hard.”

“We had the better team bar none, both defensively and offensively,” said Senior Airman Jamie Thompson, from Dover AFB, Del. “I felt like if we played just as hard as we practiced, I knew that we were going to come in and win it.”

The soldiers finished the tournament with a record of 4-5, while the sailors took third with 3-6 and the Marines wound up in last place with 3-6.

At the conclusion of the tournament, sports directors from each service named an all-tournament team. They picked 15 players from all four services to represent the armed forces at the Amateur Softball Association Women’s East Open Slow Pitch Championships in Auburn, Ala., Sept. 18 through Sept. 21.