Spark End Regular Season on a Winning Note==Take Series from the Smoke!!!

[TropicalSooner]

The Spark closed out their first regular season with a win and also took the series from the Texas Smoke down in Austin.
The Spark lost the first game in the series 10-5 with Keilani Ricketts taking the Loss. Autumn Pease for Texas got the win.
Then in the second game the game went back and forth and was tied at 4 at the end of 7 and finally we scored 3 to their 2 in the 10th inning to come out on top. Keeley Rochard started and pitched for 7.1 innings and the Donnie Gobourne came on in relief for the last 2.2 innings and got the win. Jordan Johnson took the loss for Texas.
Then in the rubber match last night, here was the starting lineup as posted:
Mon 8/7 Lineup vs Smoke

CF Malau'ulu
DH Alo
1B Ricketts
C Lee
3B Williams
LF Whaley
2B Bayless
RF Alexander
SS Busby

P Storako

This was a different Alex than what I recall seeing during the rest of the season before. Not sure what has happened, if anything, in her life, but she was fierce last night. She held the Smoke to 1 run on 1 hit through 5 innings and going into the 7th, it looked like she was going to lose holding Texas to 1 run on 3 hits and we couldn't catch a break for her. But somehow, we found where we had lost our bats and scored 3 runs for her in the top of the 7th and she did the rest to get the win, 3-1 holding Texas to 3 hits. By far her best performance of the season. I hope it was enough to hold her job for next year.

So the Spark finished the regular season in 2nd place in the league by 1/2 game. Here are the final Regular Season Standings:

Team------W------L-----%
Smoke----22-----14----0.611
Spark-----21-----14----0.600
Pride-----18------16---0.529
Vipers-----9------26---0.257

The Semifinal Playoffs run next Friday through Sunday, Aug 11th - 13th at the higher seed (HOF Stadium for us) and the Playoff Finals will be next Tuesday through Thursday, Aug 15-17th TBD.

Come out and cheer on the Spark as they head into the SemiFinals at Hall of Fame Stadium next Friday Night!!

Go Spark!!!