(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
 Olympia Haarlem leads after first day of Play-Offs
Nederlands
 HAARLEM (Neth.) -
On Sunday (September 17), FysioExpert Olympia Haarlem won twice on what became the first day of the Play-Offs after all games had rained out the day before.
Three games were canceled then.
One was added to the schedule today, the others will be made up on Tuesday and Thursday.
On Sunday, the day began with a suspenseful game between Terrasvogels and Roef!.
With the score tied at 4-4, Terrasvogels changed pitchers in the fifth inning.
Roef! then scored in the sixth and seventh inning to take a 6-4 lead.
However, with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning, Terrasvogels scored twice on an outfield-error to make it a 6-6 score and force extra innings.
After a scoreless eighth inning, Roef! scored what would the winning run in the top of the ninth.
In the bottom of the ninth, Terrasvogels left three runners behind.
In the second game of the day, Olympia Haarlem won 7-1 against Terrasvogels.
Trailing 1-0, Olympia scored three runs in the bottom of the second inning.
In the next game, Olympia won 4-1 against reigning champion Oolders Omaco Sparks Haarlem.
Olympia rallied four runs in the third inning.
Sparks Haarlem had only three basehits off of American pitcher Ellen Roberts, who recently re-joined the Olympia-squad.
She was the winning pitcher in both Olympia's games today.
In the first four weeks of the regular season, Roberts made six appearances (she was 5-0) for Olympia to make her eligible to pitch for the team in the postseason.
Early May, Roberts returned to the USA to play professionally in the National Pro Fastpitch.
In the final game of the day, Sparks Haarlem shutout Roef!, 5-0.
The team collected 11 basehits, including three by Chantal Versluis and Kingsley Avery.
Winning pitcher Monica Perry struckout eight hitters and gave up only five hits.
This season, Versluis and Perry played in the Italian Softball League.
American Perry had made two appearances on April 29 for Sparks Haarlem to make her eligible to play in the postseason.
Versluis was eligible to play for the team, as she is a player of the Netherlands National Team.
Both played for the team during the European Premiere Cup last month, then stayed with the team thereafter.
With today's results, all four teams remain in the race to reach the best-of-three Holland Series, which will be played coming weekend at the site of Roef! in Moergestel.
On Tuesday-evening, Sparks Haarlem and Terrasvogels will make up their rained out game at the site of Sparks Haarlem.
On Thursday-evening, Olympia Haarlem and Roef! will meet at the site of Olympia Haarlem.
Now that all games were played on Sunday, it could have been decided that these two remaining games could have been played on the same day, being Tuesday.
Not only, this would have be more genuine towards the four teams, it also would have created three more make-up days in case of bad weather.
Now, there will be only one make-up day left over for Thursday's game, since the two finalists have to play coming Saturday and Sunday.
When Roef! would have won its game today against Sparks Haarlem, it would have reached the Final with Olympia Haarlem.
In that case, Sparks Haarlem and Terrasvogels then would have played for third place on Tuesday-evening.
But after today's scores, several scenarios are still possible, including two 3-way ties.
When Terrasvogels wins on Tuesday against Sparks Haarlem, Olympia Haarlem clinches the Holland Series.
When Olympia then wins on Thursday, Roef!, Sparks Haarlem and Terrasvogels will end up in a tie.
As the head-to-head results will then create another tie, the Team Quality Balance will decide the ranking, making the final score on Tuesday's game important.
When Terrasvogels wins on Tuesday and Roef! wins on Thursday, Roef! will be the second finalist.
When Sparks Haarlem wins on Tuesday against Terrasvogels, the latter will be eliminated.
When Olympia then wins on Thursday, both Olympia and Sparks will reach the Holland Series.
When Sparks wins on Tuesday and Roef! wins on Thursday, this will result in a 3-way tie between Olympia, Roef! and Sparks.
As the head-to-head results also will create a tie, the final score of Thursday's game then will be of influence for the Team Quality Balance.
(complete recaps will be added soon)
(September 17)
Complete Schedule
| 
