Selects take 5th

Staff

A bleary-eyed team of Northern Ontario Selects went down to defeat knowing they couldn’t have performed much better.
The Selects, composed of players from the Rainy River District Fastball League, fought their way out of the losers’ bracket of the ‘A’ Division of the 2016 North American Fastpitch Association World Series in North Mankato, Mn. before finally losing 11-2 to the Beaumont Coyotes (California) in their winners’ bracket elimination game yesterday.
The Selects lost their first two games at the tournament before reeling off six-straight wins to emerge from the losers’ bracket.
The last of those six—a 10-4 victory over the Boston SeaDogs—ended at 3:30 a.m. yesterday.
That gave the local squad just four-and-a-half hours before they had to be on the field to face the Coyotes.
Another one of those six triumphs came at the expense of the other local team in the field, the Pinewood Expos, in a 6-2 decision Saturday evening.
Jaden Gustafson got the better of John Desaulniers in the pitching matchup while also leading his team with two RBIs.
The Expos also dropped their first two games at the tourney, then won three-straight games before being eliminated by the Selects.
In the nine-team, under-23 division, a Selects’ squad (made up of players from both the older Selects and the Expos) finished third in Pool ‘A.’
Then they fell 12-6 to the Peguis Redmen Jrs. (Manitoba) in yesterday’s second-round elimination game.