USSSA Conference Championship

The USSSA Conference Championship was held at Osceola County Stadium, winter home of the Houston Astros this past weekend. This is also the home of the USSSA Headquarters. The second Conference Championship was played and Resmondo Softball went undefeated going 6-0 on route to the championship. Resmondo has now set the modern day record for the least losses in one season. Resmondo has one more tournament to play, and even if they lose two games in that tournament they will still finish with only five losses in this 2007 season. Rich’s Superior, Steele’s Silver Bullet and Long Haul/TPS had seasons with six losses. Warren Motors, way back in the early days went 92-2 in that season. The sod boys have set this record playing nine restricted homerun tournaments in 2007 and two unlimited homerun tournaments, the Smoky and the USSSA World Series. This is no doubt an unbelievable record when most of your games are played with a twelve homerun limit on 300′ fields. I guarantee you one thing, you have to base hit it, go backside, play great defense and have some timely hitting to only lose three games so far. I believe the reason this team has a conflict this great season is because they have the best defensive team in the game, that’s for sure. They also have the best overall hitting team.

They have the best pitcher and arguably one of the greatest hitters the game has seen in Wallace, who broke the all time OB record hitting a whopping 824 OB for the season. Wallace is still in the race for the homerun leader in 2007. BJ Fulk won the conference HR title with 80. The Conference Championship and the World Series at Disney will settle who leads the country in 2007. Fulk, Garris, Wallace and Helmer are in a battle with one tournament to go. The Conference Championship got off Friday night and as I predicted in last week’s Softball Report I thought the tournament was up for grabs. I also said there would be some upsets, and sure enough the first game Aubrey’s beat Bell. Then Aubrey’s gets beat by Fencebrokers. That’s pretty much how the pool play went. Shoppe got upset by GTL/Combat.

The tournament started out Saturday and the double elimination part of it began. By the middle of the afternoon the clouds started to blacken up the sky and the rain came. The fields were covered with a whole lot of water. The tournament director decided it would be almost impossible to get all the fields ready for play and the USSSA had scheduled the awards banquet for 7:00. They decided to send the loser bracket teams home and bring back the four teams from the winner’s bracket on Sunday. Resmondo beat KME, Bell Corp beat GTL/Combat. Then it was time again for Resmondo and Bell Corp to get it on and decide who would be the 2007 Conference Champions. The game was a low scoring game with Resmondo up two going to the top of the 7th. Resmondo scored 8 big runs to take a 10 run lead and Bell Corp came to bat in the bottom of the 7th needing 10 to tie and 11 to win. Bell Corp got one and it was over. Congratulations to the Resmondo team on your win and your great season so far. Good luck at Disney. Congratulations to Bell Corp on your runner-up and good luck to your team at Disney.

I would like to congratulate all the teams who participated in this second year Conference Championship. I am sure the teams who couldn’t finish would of liked to, but sometimes decisions have to be made and it doesn’t always make people happy. Good luck to all you guys who are participating in the USSSA World Series. I loved watching the games being played on the biggest fields the teams play on all year long, 330′, 390′, 410′ with 75 ft. bases. That is the way bigtime softball should be played. The only problem that I saw in this tournament was the ball they used, a .47 core rock. It was just too good, even for this size field. The only thing that kept the ball from flying out all day was the severe heat. Any games played at night any player could of hit it out anywhere in the park. I believe a .44 525 would of been the right ball and only the real homerun hitters could of hit them out, and that’s the way it should be. Even with the heat the ball was flying past the infielders and the outfielders. The only way it was caught was if it was at somebody. The tournament was great with a lot of good teams, but just too much ball for that tournament. Good luck to everybody at Disney.