Tara Murray
The Werribee Giants were beaten by a better team in the Baseball Victoria summer league state league first semi final series, to bring their season to a close.
The Giants were the best team during the regular season, winning the minor premiership, but couldn’t get across the line against Ormond GlenHuntly in the best-of-three semi final series last week.
Ormond won game one on Wednesday night 11-3, before the Giants bounced back on Saturday to win game two, 4-2, and send it to a deciding game.
While playing at home, the Giants weren’t able to match it with Ormond, which proved too strong on Sunday, winning 4-0 to seal a grand final berth. Ormond will face St Kilda in the grand final series.
Giants coach Andrew Christou said it was a bittersweet feeling to end the season like that.
“We come up against a good side,” he said. “They had some really good pitching and we couldn’t get enough runs on the board.
“There were three really good games. We didn’t lose the game, they were just too good on the day.”
Christou said they took plenty of confidence into the finals series, with most of the group having played finals before.
He said but that wasn’t enough come the finals but knows that they played some good baseball in the final series.
While disappointed not to be in the grand final, Christou said the season overall was a really successful one.
“We’re really happy with how everything went,” he said. “We won the minor premiership and if things go well we should be promoted.
“We wanted to be promoted into division 1 coming into the season and hopefully we’ve achieved that. From a coaching perspective, I’m happy with how it went.
“There was good development in all the grades and it was a really good season. The men’s program went well and there’s a lot of kids as well.
“It’s a bit bittersweet how we finished.”
While it was heartbreak for the Giants men on the weekend, the Giants women claimed their first premiership, winning the women’s metro north-west title, 13-3 against Research.
Christou said the men’s program would be back in action in a few weeks time.
“We play in the winter in the Geelong competition,” he said. “That starts up in three or four weeks.
“We’ll take a few weeks off and get going again and get back into it.”
