Tough weekend for Athlone A’s
Cape Town Baseball Federation (CTBF) made its return to action this past weekend, the first games of the new year.
On the pitch there were not many surprises as the major league top contenders maintained their grip over the league rivals.
The weekend was an emotional one for the baseball community with it being the first games hosted since the tragic accident in December that took the lives of five women near Worcester. Last week’s games had to be postponed as families held funeral services for the victims. The women had strong links to CTBF.
Jamie Peters, Angelique and Chanté Cloete, Jesse Gordon and Jenna Moses died when the vehicle they were travelling in was involved in an accident with a truck on December 30.
Peters, Moses and Angelique Cloete had been members of Kenfac Phillies Softball Club, a female component of Maitland Giants.
Back on the mound, the games that were supposed to be played on the weekend of January 8 were played this past Sunday, meaning this weekend was a double-header.
Athlone A’s did not have a good outing with the resumption of the games as they lost both their weekend games. The games against Maitland Giants and Helderberg Pirates were incidentally 6-5 score lines in favour of A’s opposition. The two losses put a distance between A’s and the log leaders, Bothasig Knights and Bellville Tygers.
A’s first welcomed Giants on their home turf on Saturday and on Sunday visited Helderberg Pirates, narrowly losing both encounters.
The losses leave Athlone with 10 points on the seven-team log after winning five of their nine games.
This coming weekend, Athlone will be on bye and will be hoping by the time they get back in action they will have found their groove.
For now, the bye could not have come at a better time after dropping two games back-to-back. By the time they get back to action at the weekend of January 29 they will be welcoming a side that has found the going tough this season in VOB Macaws but that by no means convey that the encounter will be easy for the Bridgetown-based A’s.
League giants Bothasig Knights continued to show their superiority against their counterparts as their double-header weekend produced maximum points.
The two wins mean they maintain their top spot on the log, having dropped points only once in their eight games.
The first of the wins came on Saturday against VOB Macaws at home, taking that encounter with a scoreline of 14-7. They would then pick up where they left off when they visited Durbanville Villains a day later, winning that one by a whopping 37-6 scoreline.
Unsurprisingly, Knights is top of the standing, though level on points with their arch-nemesis in Bellville Tygers with 14 points each.
The young Villains side are yet to win a game this season after nine rounds and will be hoping to put the recent hiding by Knights behind them as they will look to try to avoid finishing the season winless.
Bothasig will look to keep their winning streak this coming weekend when they visit a Helderberg Pirates that has won three times in their nine encounters.
Bellville, a side that poses a much bigger threat to the success of Bothasig and being the only side that has beaten them this season, had a shock 4-3 loss at the hands of Helderberg Pirates in their second game of the weekend.
Having been on a bye on Saturday, Tygers got an unexpected welcome to the new year by the Pirates side that also enjoyed a perfect weekend by winning both their encounters.
Bellville will be visiting VOB Macaws next, licking their wounds and with VOB not having much luck this season, the Tygers will be hoping they add to the unfortunate results that have been following the Chukker Road-based outfit.
VOB have two wins in seven games and approaching the halfway stage of the season, something has to give.
Only Villains are doing worse than them but there is still plenty of time to change the season around as none of the sides will want to find themselves scrambling for results at the tail-end of the season.
