Women's softball team tunes up in unusual ways
The U.S. women's softball team has been dominant on its 60-game pre-Olympic barnstorming tour around the country, winning 49 of its first 50 games while outscoring opponents 573-26.
In the last week alone, the three-time defending Olympic champions won four consecutive games against teams made up mostly of college players by a combined score of 73-1. (Virginia Tech, a 1-0 winner on March 26, is the only team to beat Team USA.)
So coach Mike Candrea has decided to make things a little more challenging by allowing opponents to start innings by placing runners on base.
“I was the first victim of that tactic,” said left-hander Cat Osterman, who is 11-0 with a team-high 180 strikeouts in 85 innings. Three times she was forced to start an inning with a
runner on base who hadn’t earned her way there. And three times she stranded the runner.
“Part of it’s good. [But] part of you is 'they didn’t get that hit. Why is that runner on base?' " said Osterman, who allowed just seven earned runs in her first 24 appearances. "At the same time you rethink it. It's going to happen at some point in the Olympics that [a] runner's on second with no outs. How are we going to get out of it? How are you going to pitch in that situation?
"It takes just a second to kind of refocus and say, 'All right, this is going to be a situation. So let's get out of it. It's actually kind of fun.' "
And important, says Candrea, who has a well-earned reputation for working as hard on his players' mental approach as he does on their physical one.
"I just found that if we don't set up situations, sometimes we may go two weeks or three weeks without even having a runner on. And that’s not going to help us prepare," Candrea said. "So we kind of take advantage of putting our pitchers and putting our defense in situations they’re going to be in and see how they react."
Next Candera needs to find a way to prepare his offense since Team USA was batting a collective .430 through its first 50 games with outfielder Jessica Mendoza of Camarillo (.482, 16 HR, 81 RBI) and infielder Crystl Bustos of Canyon County (.460, 22, 75) leading the way.
-- Kevin Baxter
Top photo: Members of the U.S. women's softball team celebrate their 7-0 win over China in a game earlier this month. Credit: Alonzo Adams / Associated Press
Inset: Crystl Bustos shows off her Olympic tattoo. Credit: Associated Press
