SE Warriors stormed home to win 8-4 over the Diamond Creek Devils in the C-grade prelim final last Saturday, booking themselves a spot in the grand final.
It was a tense start from both sides, scoring no runs in the first and only the Warriors putting a run on the board in the second.
But some brilliant hitting from the Warriors saw them smash a three-run bomb in the third, bringing the score to 4-0.
The fourth saw another scoreless inning, meaning a comeback was still possible for Diamond Creek.
Then the Warriors scored two in the fifth and two in the sixth while Diamond Creek couldn’t summon a response, bringing the score out to 8-0, making it a near impossible task for the Devils.
But a last effort saw Diamond Creek score four runs to none. The minor comeback softened the scoreline but the task was too much, with the Warriors running out 8-4 victors.
SE Warriors coach and captain, Chris Argaet, gave us insight to the expectations of his team before the game.
“We wanted to come and play and have a really good bat today, and everyone turned up,” he said.
“There were no swings into silly pitches and they waited for theirs to put bat on ball.”
Argaet chose Dylan Varlet-Parkin as player of the match for his fantastic pitching, keeping the Devils scoreless during his innings.
“Yeah [Varket-Parkin] competed and that’s what we needed,” Argaet said.
“We needed him to throw strikes and get weak contact. We got good ground balls early on and that set us up really well.”
Varlet-Parkin gave us insight into what his game plan was during his pitching innings to get the game on their terms.
“I came into the game with the approach of just muck up everything,” he said.
“Mucking up their timing and mixing up everything really helped us out in the end.”
Next week SE Warriors will come back to Merri Park and play minor premiers, Alfredton, for the C-grade title.
