Difficult loss to Japan, but Canada eyes bronze
Canada's hard-luck softball team can do no better than win a bronze medal after falling to Japan in extra innings, 1-0, on Sunday.
That would be Canada's best Olympic performance in the sport.
More important, though, Canada head coach Mark Smith said his squad is making an even bigger statement at the Tokyo Summer Games: World women's softball is no longer just the United States and Japan, then everybody else.
After 1-0 losses in recent days to both the top-ranked Americans and No. 2 Japanese, the Canadians are on the verge of entrenching themselves as world No. 3.
“We have busted our (butts) the last number of years to separate ourselves from the pack to be in the conversation as one of the Big Three,” Smith said in a post-game interview. “And we've done that.”
An upset win over Japan almost certainly would have clinched a berth in Tuesday's gold-medal game for Canada. But in the first six innings, Canadian hitters could muster only four scattered hits and few scoring threats against ace Japanese starter Yukiko Ueno. Lefty reliever Miu Goto then bewildered and struck out all six Canadians in the final two innings.
Japan won it with a bases-loaded single from Eri Yamada in the bottom of the eighth, the extra inning. Yamada revealed at her post-game news conference that her father died just on Saturday.
Until Yamada's storybook heroics, gutty Canadian pitchers Sara Groenewegen, Jenna Caira and Danielle Lawrie had combined to shut out a Japanese attack that far and away has led the round-robin, pre-medal-round portion of this Olympic tournament through four of five games, scoring 17 runs.
“We're a staff. That's how we built ourselves in pitching,” Smith said. “It was a combination of everybody's efforts, whatever it takes. That's one of our strengths, and we have played to that here.
“Allowing just three runs in four games speaks to just how stable our pitching staff has been. We're going to need that for two more games so that, hopefully, we go home with a medal.”
Canada's defeat Sunday followed a similarly heartbreaking 1-0 loss to the Americans. Japan and the U.S. conclude their round-robin schedules against one another on Monday.
“The Japanese are arguably the most fundamentally sound softball players in the world, bar none,” said Smith. “They execute flawlessly. Even if you look at (Yamada's) swing that drove in the winning run, they don't swing to hit the ball out of the park; they swing just to make good contact, and let the velocity the pitcher provides do the work. And they do that better than anybody,” said Smith.