{"id":1214,"date":"2006-08-31T11:58:23","date_gmt":"2006-08-31T19:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/?p=1214"},"modified":"2006-09-02T09:11:02","modified_gmt":"2006-09-02T17:11:02","slug":"sr-canadians-aug-31-st-thomas-still-undefeated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/?p=1214","title":{"rendered":"Sr. Canadians – Aug 31 – St. Thomas still undefeated"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prince George Citizen<\/a><\/p>\n

St. Thomas still undefeated<\/strong>
\nby Scott Stanfield Special to The Citizen<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Frank Cox showed why he was voted top pitcher at the 2005 Canadian senior men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fastpitch championships.<\/p>\n

Wednesday evening at a packed Spruce City Stadium, the hard-throwing ace for the defending national champion St. Thomas Evergreen Centennials fanned 10 batters and allowed five hits in a 3-0 win over the Prince George Black Bears, host of the 2006 nationals. <\/p>\n

It was the sixth straight win for the Ontario side \u00e2\u20ac\u201d which pounded Saskatoon 9-0 Wednesday morning (see story below) \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and fourth win for Cox, who has 30 strikeouts heading into this afternoon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s meeting with Charlottetown.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the national team that we played, basically,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bears manager Nino Fabbro said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153All the starting lineup was basically national team members.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Victoria pitcher Collin McKenzie took the loss for the Bears, who dropped to 4-2 in the preliminary round. McKenzie allowed six hits and finished the evening with three strikeouts.<\/p>\n

Bears catcher Chad Ghostkeeper, who has been hot with the bat the entire tournament, went three-for-three at the plate.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Frankie, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tough,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Ghostkeeper, who has hit five home runs in six round robin games. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give ya\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 much. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to try and get what you can get off him, as you could tell he got a lot of strikeouts tonight. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supposed to be one of Canada\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The way I see it is that we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make the adjustments. We knew he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a drop-ball pitcher. We have to make adjustments. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re used to seeing riseball pitchers, dropball pitchers, but this one is just a lot of drops. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a smart pitcher, and as hitters you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to make adjustments.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

St. Thomas opened the scoring in the second inning on a line drive up the third base line by catcher Sean O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Brien, who drove in Steve Mullaley. The left fielder had reached first base after being hit by a McKenzie pitch and had then stolen second to set up the first run of the game.<\/p>\n

In the bottom of the fifth, Cents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 third baseman Craig Crawford led with a triple after smacking one off the right field fence. He then reached home plate on Ryan Wolfe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s RBI single.<\/p>\n

The Cents made it 3-0 after six when Dale Levey hit a solo home run over the right field fence. Mullaley and Crawford each finished with two hits.<\/p>\n

Despite his team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lack of scoring, Bears manager Nino Fabbro was still able to find some positives out of Wednesday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s loss, Ghostkeeper being one of them.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a tremendous ballplayer and he comes to play every game,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Fabbro said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say enough about that kid. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a tremendous leader and a great ball player, great person, family man and everything. He goes up there (to the plate) with a purpose, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s his only purpose.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There were a lot of positive things that I saw, the attitude of the team. I think the team is coming together, and that was important. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to be important to win this thing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Fabbro said Korrey Gareau will take to the mound for the Bears final round-robin game today at 1 p.m. against the Jarvis Merchants of Ontario. St. Thomas and Charlottetown square off at 3 p.m.<\/p>\n

Although Prince George is already through to the top half of this weekend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s playoff round, the local side isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t about to roll over and take the day off today.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We still need a win (today), we want to go out on a good note, so hopefully we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll bounce back tomorrow and be ready to play again,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ghostkeeper said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prince George Citizen St. Thomas still undefeated by Scott Stanfield Special to The Citizen Frank Cox showed why he was voted top pitcher at the 2005 Canadian senior men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fastpitch championships. Wednesday evening at a packed Spruce City Stadium, the hard-throwing ace for the defending national champion St. Thomas Evergreen Centennials fanned 10 batters and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}