OKLAHOMA CITY, OK - The state playoffs, which just ended in Katy’s brilliant march to the finals, may be history, but the summer season that allows girls playing on playoff-bound teams like Katy, Cinco Ranch, Waltrip and Westside is just beginning.

A local entry in the summer travel ball competition, West Houston Storm--a team composed of mostly senior girls attending Westside, Waltrip, Mayde Creek, St. Agnes and St. Pius high schools—kicked off their summer season in a big way this past weekend.  The girls traveled to Oklahoma City for a Triple Crown qualifier and a chance to attend the Women’s College World Series.

The tournament was set up to allow round robin play among 40 teams set up in five pools of eight teams each.  Teams from states as far west as Utah and as far east as Florida competed in the tournament at Boomtown Ballpark in Oklahoma City June 1-3.

West Houston Storm players were part of the overflow crowd that watched Arizona crush DePaul and Baylor fall to Northwestern at the WCWS on Friday.  While the girls expressed disappointment that neither Texas entry in the WCWS—Texas A&M or Baylor—advanced past the elimination rounds on Friday, they weren’t disappointed in their own showing at the Triple Crown tournament, a qualifier for the national Triple Crown World Series to be held in Park City, Utah in late July.

The West Houston Storm, an 18-and-under team associated with the Memorial-Ashford Girls Softball Association, finished 2-3 in the Oklahoma City tournament, defeating 18U teams from Missouri and Oklahoma, while falling to the Utah Slammers, Oklahoma City Ultimate and Albuquerque Starz.

“I think they did great for their first tournament,” said Paul Heidbreder, who handled the managing chores for the team during the weekend.  In fact, the team was most proud of one of its losses, a 4-0 shut out against the Albuquerque team, which went through pool play undefeated.  “No one had come as close as us to competing with them,” Heidbreder said. 

“It was fun for the girls to be able to play teams from other states.  It proved to our girls that we could compete with any team in the country, and I’m very proud of the way they succeeded in their very first tournament of the season,” he added. 

“One team lost to them 10 to nothing,” said Heidbreder’s daughter Alison, who pitched all six innings against the Starz and took the loss.  “We did really well holding them to four runs.”

Tristan Moone pitched a one-hitter in picking up the win for the Albuquerque team.  Chelsea Bay, a Storm infielder from Mayde Creek High, got the Storm’s sole hit in the contest, an infield single.

The Storm had an easier time in their first game on Friday, a 3-2 victory over the Oklahoma Blaze, a team from the Norman area.  Alison Heidbreder, the 2007 District 20-4A MVP from Waltrip High, pitched the win and homered in the contest.  After allowing the Blaze an unearned run in the third, the Storm evened the score in the top of the fourth.  Heidbreder led off with a solo homer over the left field fence then Pam Straker, a 2007 first-team all-district selection from Waltrip, singled and stole second and third.  Straker slid under the catcher’s tag for the Storm’s second score, racing home on Elizabeth Stires’ sacrifice grounder. 

The Blaze tied the game in the bottom of the fifth, but the Storm came right back with the go-ahead run in the sixth as Laura Sotiropoulos, another 20-4A first team all-district selection from Waltrip, reached on an error and scored on , Heidbreder singled, and Straker walked to load the bases.  Sotiropoulos scored on Stires’ infield grounder for the winning score.

The Storm run-ruled the Missouri Wolverines, a St. Louis-area team, 7-1.  Stires, known to her teammates as “B” who also plays for the Westside High varsity, pitched a complete game in picking up the win.  After giving up a solo run in the first inning, Stires shut the Wolverines down the rest of the way, allowing just three hits in the game. 

The Storm offense put up three runs in the third and four in the fourth on seven hits to blow the game open.  Bay singled in the third for the team’s first hit of the game then came around to score on Mayde Creek product Alycia Rodriguez’s single.  Abbie Ornelas, another varsity player for Westside, singled to score Rodriguez, and Straker knocked one into left for the Storm’s third straight single of the inning to plate Ornelas. 

But the Storm wasn’t done.  Wolverine miscues, singles by Lauren Campos (St. Pius), Rodriguez, and Heidbreder and a bases-loaded walk by Sotiropoulos fueled a four-run fifth.  Teresa Macejewski, a sophomore player from St. Agnes, Becky Brune, Campos and Rodriguez all scored for the Storm to invoke the tournament’s mercy rule.

In other action, the Storm lost a 4-0 decision to the Utah Slammers on the strength of a four-run first inning by the Slammers.  Storm pitchers Brune and Stires gave up just one hit the rest of the way, as the Storm could muster just four hits of their own, one a double to right by Macejewski, and three singles by Heidbreder, Rodriguez, and Cynthia Macias, a member of the Westside varsity during the regular season.

In the Storm’s third of three back-to-back games over the course of four and a half hours on Sunday, Oklahoma City Ultimate pitchers Alysse Yates and Kalynn Schrack combined for a one-hitter and nine strikeouts for a 6-0 shut out over the Storm.  Ornelas’s single into right in the fourth was the Storm’s sole hit in the contest.  Brune, who was named to the District 20-5A all-district second team for Westside this season, threw a complete game for the Storm, allowing just one earned run in the loss.  “All three pitchers did great against some very tough competition,” Paul Heidbreder said.

Except for Alison Heidbreder and Laura Sotiropoulos, both graduates of Waltrip’s 2007 regional 4A quarterfinalist team who will be playing ball in college next season, the Storm players will be back in their respective high schools next fall preparing for the 2008 season.  “We showed ourselves we have what it takes to compete at this level,” Alison Heidbreder said.  And that should give the Storm players’ future opponents something to think about.

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