Cougars tail their way to defeat

AFTER a stellar regular season and a stirring finals win over Springvale last week, the Berwick Cougars thirds entered their Victorian Baseball Summer League grand final against Malvern on the weekend with form on their side.
Their hard work throughout the season had cemented home field advantage for the grand final but Malvern turned up to play – jumping out of the blocks early and piling on the runs, getting out to a 9-1 lead early in the contest.
The Cougars tried to claw their way back but the deficit was too big.
The Casey side ultimately went down 13-1.
While individual highlights were few and far between in that game, coach Alan Pender, pitcher Joel Stubbs and Scott Olding stood tall for the Cougars in their finals campaign.
Due to the success of the thirds team throughout the season, the Cougars’ fourths had to play away at Fitzroy as the home team in their grand final – despite also finishing on top of the ladder.
It was a tight clash in the early going with the Berwick boys leading 1-0 at the top of the fourth inning.
But as Fitzroy’s hitters began to take over, the Cougars’ lead turned into a 1-4 deficit by the end of the fourth.
The floodgates then opened for Fitzroy in the closing stages of the game.
While the Cougars did have a glimmer of hope to mount a comeback, they couldn’t convert their base runners into runs on the scoreboard – going down 10-3.
The better players for the Cougars’ thirds throughout their finals campaign were pitcher Andy Hemmes, Dane Roy and coach Paul Quinn, who selflessly left himself out of the line-up at times throughout the season but got the job done when called upon in the last two games.