Western claimed the National Softball Championship Sunday at Windsor's Mic Mac Park with a 6-0 victory over the University of Calgary Dinos. Melinda Stevenson (Brampton) got the Championship win giving up just 1 hit over 4 innings and Molly Yetman (Cambridge) struck out 8 over 3 innings of relief. Offensively, Meg Hewins (Burlington) blasted a 3 run home run and Lindsey Martin (London) and Tricia MacKay (Embro) both hit doubles for the Mustangs.
UWO got to the final on the strength of a Yetman 1 hit, 11 strikeout, 5 inning, 7-0 run rule victory over the Durham Lords in one semi-final. Leslie Hanson (Oakville) delivered the big blow, a 3 RBI home run in the 2nd inning. The Mustangs scored 4 more in the 3rd inning and cruised to the victory. Hewins went 3 for 3 with a double.
On Saturday, the Mustangs won all three of their round robin games. In the 5 tournament games played, Western allowed only 1 run while scoring 41. Yetman (8 IP, 19 K, 2 H, 0.00 ERA) picked up the tournament top pitcher award and Hewins (0.643 BA, 3 HR, 9 RBI) the top batter award. Stevenson (9 IP, 10 K, 1 H, 0.00 ERA) won 2 player of the game awards and Stacie Cox (London; 5 IP, 7 K, 1 H, 0.00 ERA), Yetman, and Hewins received one each.
You can still catch the National Champs in action this fall as their undefeated season is not yet over. The final four Ontario regular season games, rescheduled from this past weekend so Western and Windsor could attend the National Tournament, go next weekend in Waterloo when the Mustangs play the Waterloo Warriors and Laurier Hawks in a pair of double dips on Saturday and Sunday. Then, October 21-23 at London's Stronach Park the Mustangs will enter the Ontario Championship Tournament as the number 1 seed. There the top 8 Ontario schools will be placed into two pools of 4 based on their regular season records. Following pool play on Friday and Saturday, the second and third place finishers play for semi-final berths against the first place pool finishers. Then the winners will play for the Championship and the losers for the bronze.
