The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

A year ago, coach Juliette Douglas-Sands couldn’t field a junior girls’ team. On Monday, her Kingsway Academy Saints found a full squad and they took advantage of their home field to open their Bahamas Association of Independent Secondary Schools’ 2015 softball season with a big win over the St Andrew’s Hurricanes, who are going through a rebuilding stage as well.

After giving up seven unearned runs in the top of the first inning to the Hurricanes, the Saints responded by marching to an explosive 12-run first and 8-run second inning as they batted around the clock twice to go on for an abbreviated 20-9 win via the 10-run rule.

“We still have a lot of work to do, a lot of work,” said Douglas-Sands, who advised her team not to get too jovial over the win. “For a lot of them, this is their first time playing and a lot of the things that we went over, they still made those errors in the game.

“So we have a lot of things to work on in our practice session in preparation for our next game on Wednesday. But it’s a lot of work that we have to do and I’m not going to take the credit because we only have about three or four seasoned players and they are the ones who are carrying the team.”

Douglas-Sands was referring to pitcher Sophie Sands, shortstop Danielle Rolle, first sacker Tanewia Simmons and right fielder Antonia Daxon, who all play in the girls’ softball programme at the Junior Baseball League of Nassau. It showed as they were the more aggressive players, making the more difficult plays.

While Sands helped her own cause on the mound, she joined Rolle, Simmons, Daxon, Tedisha Mackey, N’Nikia Corbin and Astronique Thurston, who were all responsible for scoring either two or three of the runs for Kingsway Academy.

Rolle also snagged down a couple of pop-ups and started a couple of defensive plays to first base that kept St Andrew’s off base.

Although 29 runs were scored, there was only a total of five hits in the game, three by the Saints and the other two for the Hurricanes.

St Andrew’s, however, had a little more diffcult task on both ends of the field as pitcher Jenna Bayles had some problems connecting with her catcher, Bianca Roberts. But after the damage had already been done, coach Jen Roach switched Roberts with centre fielder Julie Raine, but it was a little too late.

Kingsway Academy already had the momentum and kept tacking on the runs once they got on base. They either stole the bases or advanced on wild pitches and passed balls.

“This was a learning experience for us. We only had two returning players this year,” Roach said. “This is a brand new team, a young team and we only started practicing about a week and a half ago, so it’s been a real learning experience for us this year.”

Last year, St Andrew’s made it to the championship, only to lose to the St Augustine’s College Big Red Machine.

With just about all of the players moving up to form what Roach considers a very solid senior girls’ team, she said they had to make a push to get this team together.

“They’re learning very quickly, so I think you will see a completely different team at the end of the season,” she said.

As the season progresses, Douglas-Sands said she’s looking for some great things from her Hurricanes’ players.

“If they stay committed to the programme that we have here and to the training sessions, they will come out on top,” she said. “I’m confident that we will do very well.”