Softball: Pitcher to fore in team's fight back

Papatoetoe pitcher Michelle Kingi contributed with both bat and ball to help keep her team's play-off hopes alive at the New Zealand Open women's club softball championships in Wellington yesterday.

After two wins on day one, Papatoetoe were thumped 12-nil by Canterbury Cardinals yesterday morning, but bounced back to beat Johnsonville 6-nil in the afternoon. Kingi pitched a tight game, giving up just one hit and taking 11 strikeouts from the 23 batters she faced.

She also came up trumps with two safe hits and a sacrifice hit in her four turns at bat, batting in Papatoetoe's final run of the game in the fourth innings. She almost added to the score in the sixth but was called out coming home.

But it was a different story for Papatoetoe earlier as they managed just one hit off one of the rising stars of the game, Canterbury Cardinals' Sheree Cartwright.

Cartwright also did damage with the bat, batting 1000, including two home runs.

Auckland Marist suffered their third loss of the tournament when they were beaten 3-4 by Johnsonville.

But Marist came back in the afternoon with their first win, beating Hutt Dodgers 3-2 in a tie-breaker. The scores were tied at 2-all after the regular seven innings. All the run scoring was in the third innings.

At the top of the eighth, Marist produced a nice double-play to extinguish the Dodgers' scoring chance, and then in the bottom of the eighth Jade Wikaira crossed home plate on a Corina Hale left field drive to clinch the win.

Hale is the younger sister of Black Sox star Donny Hale, while the Marist side also includes Ruth Kohlhase, younger sister of former international Eddie Kohlhase, and Kimberley Nukunuku, a relative of Dion and Nathan Nukunuku, who are both members of the Black Sox.

Christchurch United ran up the tournament's biggest score to date in beating Dodgers 15-nil in four innings. Amanda Curry had two home runs while Rhonda Hira also put the ball out of the park.

United continued an unbeaten run with a 4-nil win over Poneke Kilbirnie in their second game of the day, and Hutt Cardinals beat Miramar 5-1.