MN Irish 18 Gold in Marietta for ASA 18 Gold Nationals

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The Minnesota Irish 18 Gold have traveled to Marietta, GA to face the top 64 teams in the country in what is affectionately called "the big show". The week starts with two pool play games which have no bearing on the bracket, but offer all the college scouts an opportunity to see the student athletes in action, and the coaches a chance to play all the girls on the roster without concern of the tournament outcome. Once bracket play begins on Wednesday, the double elimination portion of the event raises the stakes for the top prize in amateur fastpitch softball.

The ASA moved the tournament out of Oklahoma City for the first time in several years, and returned to West Cobb County just northwest of Atlanta. The weather this week is supposed to be between 75 and 95 with high humidity and scattered showers. The ASA will be attempting to webcast the games on fields 1, 2, 4 and 5. They will also be trying to provide live stats via GameTracker along with box scores and play recaps, but after viewing the first pool play's stats, they've got some work to do to provide accurate results as they are missing many substitutions. In the meantime, all Irish games will be webcast on the mnirish.ihigh.com website with the approval of the tournament. Photos will also be loaded into Flickr for viewing, downloading, and slideshows.

All game schedules and brackets are available on the ASA 18 Gold website. The Irish games will be updated on the 18 Gold team page. Remember all game times are in the Eastern time zone.

Best of luck to our lady Irish!