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BRAKETTES, SAINTS VIE IN PRE-TOURNAMENT GAME
 July 30 - STRATFORD - The Stratford Brakettes conclude the 2018 regular season Tuesday night when they host the St. Louis Saints at 6:30 p.m. at Frank DeLuca Hall Fame Field. In the second game, the XTreme Chaos of Stratford will face the CT Legends at 8 p.m.
St. Louis carries an 18-4 overall record, which features three invitational championships and one runner-up finish this year. The Saints will be out to defend their Women's Major Softball National Championship, which begins Thursday at DeLuca Field and the Short Beach Rec Complex. This is the 10th annual WMS and there are nine teams competing.
Veteran Saints Manager Ed Martz, now in his 64th year of women's fastpitch softball, has five All-America players returning from last year's team that went 6-0 to capture the WMS championship. The Brakettes were upset by the Nook Gold 2-1 in the winner's bracket semi-finals and then were eliminated by the Lyons Spirit 5-4 to finish in fifth place.
Pitcher Madi Norman, the 2017 WMS Most Valuable Player and Home Run champ, third baseman Brittany Krodinger, shortstop Sammey Bunch, pitcher Bailey Lange, and center fielder Courtney Krodinger will lead the Saints into action.
Since the Brakettes and Saints first hooked up in 2004, Manager John Stratton's club has won 36 of the 40 meetings, but many have been one or two-run decisions. Last year the teams met in a pre-tournament contest with the Brakettes winning 8-2. Five times they have met in the WMS finals, but they didn't play in the tourney proper last year.
This week will mark the final one for veteran pitcher Brandice Balschmiter (10-2) who is retiring. Balschmiter, a 12-year veteran, has a 189-16 overall record, good for fifth all-time in team history. She has 1,778 career strikeouts, fourth on the all-time list. Balschmiter is a former four-time Atlantic-10 Pitcher of the Year and three-time NCAA All-America at UMass.
Stratton received strong efforts from Kaysee Talcik (12-0), of Shelton, and Raeanne Geffert (5-0), of Seymour, as they swept four games from the Spirit last weekend to raise their record to 39-3. Denise Denis, another veteran and the team's all-time home run leader, needs one more hit to reach the 800-career mark.
This week will mark the first time all season that the Brakettes will have a full complement of players. “It will be nice to have all this talent at our disposal. This past weekend we were missing our five left-handed jack-rabbits,” said Stratton. Val Suto (.446), Denise (.396), Theresa Kane (.442), Brittany Lampert (.333) and Brittany Younan (.419) did not make the trip.
WMS tournament passes will be on sale at the ticket booth Tuesday as well as Thursday when play begins at 1 p.m. All Stratford residents, upon providing proof of residency, will be admitted free as the guest of the Brakettes for Tuesday's doubleheader.
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