Shot Callers win softball championships

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The Shot Callers, one of Glen Cove’s four women’s softball teams, are the champions of the summer season. Last Wednesday, they went up against the K.C. Gallaghers in the finals, ultimately besting them 5-3.

Before the game, Bob Cooper, third base coach of the Gallaghers, put the odds at 50/50. When asked what she thought her team’s chances were, Aja Alter, the captain of the Shot Callers, said, “That’s a hell of a question to ask before the game.”

Cooper said that his team had a better chance of winning “if the girls get out early,” adding that “Sometimes it takes them three or four innings to get it going.”

While the teams were warming up, Cooper told the Herald Gazette, “[The Shot Callers] have hitting, we have fielding and overall talent.” Alter said that it came down to the Shot Callers’ younger, more energetic roster against the Gallaghers’ experience. In the end, youth won.

“It was a great game,” Alter said, before congratulating the Gallaghers on their close matchup.

Cooper said that other than, “a couple of little ‘oops’ on the field . . . It was a good game.”

Alter said that her team got a wake-up call in the fourth inning, when the umpire made what she described as a “terrible call.” The game was, so far, scoreless, with Gallaghers runners on first and second. The umpire gave them two runs for a ball thrown out of play by Alter, who said they should only have been awarded one. Going into the bottom of the fourth, the score was 2-0, and alter was furious. “I kind of went a little crazy,” she said, with a chuckle. “We had a little bit of anger about that. It kind of woke us up.”

Alter was the first at-bat for the Shot Callers after that. “I was so angry I hit a triple,” she said. “Right there, we busted it open.” They scored four runs that inning. “I think our comeback woke them up,” she said. But not enough, it seems. By the top of the fifth, the score was 4-2. Two innings later, when the game was called, each team had scored one more run for a final score of 5-3.

The women’s league is now just two years into a reboot. It had been active in the early 2000s, but, Glen Cove Parks and Recreation Department head Darcy Belyea said, “It just kind of fizzled due to lack of interest.” In 2016 Alter had approached her and asked to start it up again.

Belyea said that it takes interest from the public in order to get programs like the women’s league off the ground. “I’m always open to it,” she said, “but if there aren’t people coming to me and saying, ‘Can we do this?’ I’m not going to bang my head against the wall, scrambling to put teams together.”

Belyea and Alter both said that they’d like to see a fall season for the women’s league. “I encourage everybody of all ages,” Alter said, “whether you’ve played before or not.”

“Come down, get involved, make new friends,” she continued. “It takes a group of people to make something successful, and if you’re having fun doing it, it just makes it that much easier.”