The Bellarine Bears’ A Grade and A Reserve teams played against Mounties YC and the C Grade side hosted Guild Lions.
The A Grade side was able to come away with the Bears’ only win for the weekend.
Starting off with the first game between the A Reserve and the Mounties and 17-year-old Lachlan Hockey was the man on the mound for the Bears. Hockey had an average game and reached his pitch count after only 2.5 innings, with seven hits, six strikeouts and four batters walked. Matthew Sage came on to relieve the pitching for the remaining innings of the game with five strikeouts and three batters walked.
The Bears’ batters were struggling to convert the hits into runs with six batters left on base at the end of the game. This, combined with Mounties taking advantage of the errors that were made, gave Mounties the win 10-4.
Harry Lazarus and Stuart Anderson both finished the game with two runs each with Anderson also scoring an RBI. Single hit games went to Mark Lazarus, Alex Hockey and Chris Hockey.
Later in the day, Josh Crotty had an absolutely amazing game pitching to Lewis Weldon for the Bears, with some great backup in the field and from his reliever Simon Murry to hand the Bears the 7-1 win.
Emotions were high for Crotty and his side, who went down to the Mounties last time they played due to the weather, to prove a point that they play well away from their home ground in Wallington.
Hits were coming in plenty for the Bears with a big double to right field from Chris Barker as well as two-hit games from Cameron Brown and Simon Murry and single hit games from Lachlan Medew and Lachlan Hockey.
Best players for the day were Josh Crotty, Simon Murry and Cameron Brown.
The final game for the weekend on Sunday between Guild and Bellarine was extremely close for the entire two hours. Both teams were strong in the field, making minimal errors and had strong pitcher and catcher combinations. It has been great to see junior players Ethan Weakley and Finn Ferguson-Cumming come into their own over the start of this winter season in their first year as senior players and they both played great games over the weekend in both fielding and batting.
The game between these two teams went down to the wire, with the Bears narrowly losing to the Lions side 8-6. Best players for this game went to Paul Cameron, Meg Fahy and Matt Price.
Want to find out more? Follow the Facebook page at ‘Bellarine Bears’ and message them to find out what to do to become a Bear. The club also runs a T-ball program for junior cubs and has both under-12 and an under-14 sides.
