(Story & Photo by Marco Stoovelaar)
 International Lizzie Clarijs returns to Amsterdam Pirates
Nederlands
 AMSTERDAM (Neth.) -
Infielder Lizzie Clarijs, player of the Netherlands National Softball Team, has returned to Amsterdam Pirates, the club where she started her softball-career.
After having played for Terrasvogels and Tex Town Tigers, Clarijs will wear the Pirates-shirt next year for the first time since 2013.
...Lizzie Clarijs playing...
...for Terrasvogels...
(© Photo: Marco Stoovelaar) |
With Amsterdam Pirates, Lizzie Clarijs played in the second-highest league in 2012 and 2013.
But in both these seasons, she also played in the Dutch big league for the Netherlands Juniors Team.
After having played in one game during the 2012 season, she played in sixteen games in 2013, batted .212 and collected four extra-basehits, including her first big league-homerun.
Clarijs also played for the Juniors in the big league in the following three seasons.
From 2014 on, the infielder (second base/short stop) played in seven seasons for Terrasvogels.
In four of these seasons, Clarijs batted .300 or higher.
In 2015, she batted .304 with five triples and led the team with 32 runs batted in.
In the next season, Clarijs batted .256, but again led Terrasvogels with 26 RBI's, sharing the lead with Jessie van Aalst.
In that season, she made her pitching-debut and was the winning pitcher in her lone appearance.
Since then, she was inserted in several games in the following seasons.
Lizzie Clarijs batted .306 in 2017 with eight extra-basehits and led Terrasvogels with 22 runs scored.
In 2019, her batting average raised to .360, which was second-best of Terrasvogels, behind Katharina Szalay (.448), but led with 24 runs batted in.
In the shortened 2020 season, she batted a career-high .368, which was third-best behind Szalay (.466) and Karin Tuk (.385).
In the past two seasons, Lizzie Clarijs played for Tex Town Tigers and again had two fine offensive seasons, hitting .350 and .351 respectively.
Last year, she scored 36 runs and batted in 41, which was second-best behind Dinet Oosting (45).
This year, Clarijs scored 24 runs.
She also had ten pitching-appearaces, was the winning pitcher in six games and earned one save.
After having played in some exhibition games of the Netherlands Softball Team in four previous years, Lizzie Clarijs made her international debut in 2020.
In 2021, she participated with the Orange Team in the European Championship in Italy.
This year, Clarijs participated in the Canada Cup-tournament and the European Championship in Spain.
(November 15)
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