THUNDER BAY – To say that the United States was the team to beat at last year’s Group A qualifier for the World Baseball Softball Confederation Women’s Baseball World Cup would be a massive understatement.
After beating Australia in a 3-2 affair to open the tournament, the Americans rattled off 68 more runs and weren’t scored on during their other four contests in Thunder Bay.
Now they look to continue that strong play when they open the World Cup at Port Arthur Stadium on Sunday at 10 a.m. against Venezuela.
“We’re not underestimating anybody, but we’re more confident in the sense of trusting our process and trusting what we are doing on a day-to-day basis,” United States manager Veronica Alvarez said after a pre-tournament press conference at Lakehead University on Saturday afternoon.
“We’re not changing or reinventing the wheel here.”
The United States team features 17 players that were in Thunder Bay last summer.
The only member of the squad who is competing in her first WBSC tournament is 17-year-old right-handed pitcher Sophia Broderick.
“There’s a lot of age differences on the team but I don’t think that really applies to anything,” United States second baseman and team captain Alex Hugo said.
“When all 20 of us are locked in, we don’t see each other’s age and we don’t necessarily see our skill sets.
“Our only job is to put that all together and to win every inning in every game.”
After winning the first two editions of the World Cup in 2004 and 2006, the Americans haven’t hoisted the trophy since.
They reached the final in 2012 and 2014 but lost back-to-back 3-0 contests to Japan, who have won six straight tournaments.
At the last World Cup in 2018 in Viera, Fla., the United States finished in fourth place after an 8-5 loss to Canada in the bronze medal game.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a six-year wait between tournaments, which has allowed the Americans to go about constructing their roster the way that they’ve wanted to.
“We approached this very intentionally and thoughtfully and I think we’ve done a really good job of using that added time to really challenge our players,” Alvarez said.
“We’ve had players from our past national teams that have moved on, but we’ve been able to fill those holes by building up our younger players that are coming through the high school ranks and getting those college opportunities.
“We’ve been able to build things up into a place that we feel very confident and comfortable about, not only with our team, but with the entire game of women’s baseball.”
The round-robin portion of the tournament, which also includes Chinese Taipei and Mexico, wraps up on Thursday.
A rain date for any postponed games is set for Friday.
The top two teams advance to the gold medal game at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 3. Third and fourth place in the standings square off for bronze at 11 a.m. that day.
The full schedule for the World Cup can be found on the event’s website.
