Jordan Waitere, who hit a home run in Giants win over Dodgers. PHOTO/JADE CVETKOV
SOFTBALL
CHRIS COGDALE
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A win and a loss for Giants on Saturday leaves their prospects of making the Intercity Premier Reserve semifinals up in the air.
Giants started with a tight 3-0 victory over Dodgers, before going down 1-8 to Hutt Valley Marist.
Giants club president Chris Feary said, “that is probably enough to make Saturday’s semifinals, but that will not be confirmed until early this week”.
Feary watched both games on Saturday and was impressed with the effort.
He said “the Dodgers match was very close and it wasn’t until the fourth or fifth innings that we got on top of them”.
Corey Karaitiana was the first batter to cross the home plate, followed by Greg Paku and a home run to Jordan Waitere.
A win over Hutt Valley Marist in the second match of the double-header would have guaranteed Giants a place in the semifinals.
The game didn’t start well for the Giants, with a few costly fielding errors gifting Marist early runs.
Feary said a heavy workload for pitcher Justin “Chunky” Karaitiana, as well as a finger injury sustained at last weekend’s Evergreens tournament proved too much; “it was a huge effort by Chunky but in the end five games for the Evergreens and two games one after the other with a split finger saw him struggle in the second game”.
Meanwhile, much to the frustration of Feary, games in the Hutt Valley Presidents and Major B women’s seeding rounds were cancelled.
“We were advised of the cancellation at 11am, so we went over the hill to watch the premier reserves, only to find out we needed our sunscreen” he said.
The Presidents and Major B women will play their last seeding matches on Saturday, with the semifinals to be played on the following Saturday.
