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Bermuda's best softballers came away with three wins in a U.S. softball tournament.

The Sea Dogs, a combination of the island's two best slow-pitch teams - Sea Venture and Tuff Dogs - managed to do better at this year's tourney than they did in 2005 when they came away with no wins.

Playing in the D Division against 29 other teams, Sea Dogs got a default victory over Zultan before being humbled 17 to 2 by U.S. Tech/No Fear. The club had to then fight its way through the losers bracket with triumphs over Scared Hitless (18 to 3) and Alex Bail Bonds (11 to 6), but then fell 18 to 1 to Ultra.

Team coach Danny Cook said said his squad played much better than they did last year in Disney's last Chance Challenge VI, which was partially due to them moving down a division.

"We beat two teams pretty easily and we were beaten by two teams pretty easily," Cook said. Last year all the teams were damn good. We were right in the middle, but there was a big disparity in talent."

Playing on a field where the outfield fence is 305 feet the outfielders had to get used to playing at a much larger field. At Bernard Park the distance is 235 feet -some 40 feet shy of the 275 feet minimum regulation distance for slow-pitch).

One other difference is that no homers are allowed in the D Division. Any balls that are hit out of the park become outs.

"Luckily the wind was blowing in or otherwise a couple of balls might have been gone, but no home runs were hit."

Justin Barritt, manager of the Tuff Dogs, said: "This was like playing at a whole different level of softball. It was like nothing I've ever seen. It was an eye-opener."

Cook said: "We may not be going back to the same tournament but we are planning on continuing to play in overseas tournaments." Cook said they were looking at playing in a tournament in May and follow that up with a later tourney.[[In-content Ad]]

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