July 7, 2024
WESTMINSTER, Colo. — Any team at this week's Triple Crown Colorado 4th of July softball tournaments hopes to compete with hot bats, but Peoria Sluggers Twait 18u has been operating on a much higher level.
Their bats have brought a raging inferno and have kept them undefeated leading into the final day of the Sparkler competition. On Saturday afternoon at Tepper Fields, the team out of Illinois burned Lady Dynamite Black with a 14-2 clinic. By game’s end, they had tallied 93 runs through seven contests.
This is their first trip to the Sparkler tournament.
Paisley Twait led the way with five RBI off of a pair of home runs, and Kylee Vaugn backed her up with three RBI of her own. Seven ladies in all batted in runs for the aptly-named Sluggers. It must just be something in the Colorado air.
Twait logged her fifth and sixth home runs of the week on Saturday afternoon.
“I guess it must just go farther in this air. I don't know,” Twait said. “In Illinois it doesn't fly as fast. We were playing two weekends ago with a flight-restricted ball and we were struggling, because we like to hit the ball hard and out of the park.”
Meadow Terry took on the entirety of the pitching responsibilities, striking out eight while only allowing one earned run. The three pitchers who represented Lady Dynamite, meanwhile, collectively struck out just three batters while giving up 10 earned runs and 13 hits.
All of it calculated into a perfect storm.
“Honestly, hitting spots and just making sure that you can trust your defense behind you has really been a big part,” Terry said. “This is the best of the best. This is Colorado Sparkler. We just got to make sure that we're hitting spots and I can trust my defense.”
Following two incredibly clean innings from both teams, Twait got the ball rolling in the top of the third with a three-run bomb over the center field wall. Ava Stephens, not to be outdone, hit her own solo moonshot in the bottom of that same frame to get Lady Dynamite on the board.
Lady Dynamite added to its own scoresheet with a base hit from Ember Hopkins that turned into a fumbling error near first base. Angelina Fortunato turned on the turbo jets and sprinted toward home from second.
The Sluggers led 3-2 at the end of the third, then sat in a holding period until the top of the fifth. That’s when they really exploded.
The first firework came from the bat of Kendall Lowery, whose hard hit toward the pitcher allowed a run to score. Vaughn, Ella Hermes and CJ Troxell all contributed doubles and another four runs before frame's end to give Peoria a nice 8-2 cushion.
Liv Calderone added another home run, this time a no-doubter at center field, to further bury Lady Dynamite. Not long after Kierra Johnson scored on an error from Lady Dynamite's shortstop, then Lowery, Vaughn and Twait took it home.
“It has been unbelievable,” head coach Dain Twait said. “We were just looking through our OPS on GameChanger before this. We had girls that we've been sitting on the bench come in and subbed in yesterday and hit home runs back-to-back. It's very hard to pick a lineup. They're all hot. It's crazy.”
The Sluggers will now advance to the championship bracket, where they'll play as many as four games on Sunday in search of a tournament crown.
