Softball women blast off

Giants have made a spectacular start to their debut season in the Inter City series premier two women's softball league.
Their enthralling 17-15 victory over highly regarded Saints at South Park, Masterton, on Saturday made it two wins from as many matches after they crushed Kapiti 16-6 the previous weekend.
The latest success came after a battle royal, with the two teams being level pegging at 15-15 at the end of ordinary time, meaning a tiebreaker had to be played to find a winner. And Giants held their nerve best, adding two more runs to their tally while Saints were kept scoreless.
Giants coach Karen O'Connor, who wore the Saints colours in her playing days, was delighted with the manner in which her largely inexperienced side handled the pressure of a match in which neither side was ever able to establish a clear enough lead to feel confident of a win.
"There was practically nothing in it all the way through ... it was one of those games where if one team came up with three runs in an innings the other would do pretty much the same," she said.
Catcher Tammy Waitere was an outstanding contributor for Giants, both with the consistency of her batting and her organisational skills from behind the plate.
Second base Emma Matthews also took the eye in the batting box, slamming one of the three home runs Giants registered during the encounter.
With the bulk of the Giants squad in either their first or second season of softball, it's little wonder O'Connor still sees them as having huge scope for improvement.
"A lot of them are still coming to terms with the basics, like not over-running bases or when to run and when not to run," she said.
"They are very raw in so many ways but they want to learn, and that's going to take them a long way."
All the runs were scored in each team's first turn at bat when Porirua City United beat Giants 3-1 in their Inter City series premier men's match on Saturday.
The sole Giants score came courtesy of a home run by Justin Karaitiana but it wasn't as if they didn't put bat to ball on a regular basis. In fact, of the 21 times Giants players went to the batting box only two were struck out.
"We were hitting it okay but we just couldn't get it through the field," Giants pitcher Ritchie Clarke said.
Porirua, for their part, also found it difficult to score but the three runs they managed in their first innings proved vital to the end result.
Canadian "import" Will Fehrman made his first appearance in the Giants colours and impressed with the speed and accuracy of his fielding at third base.