Under beautiful sunny skies on a perfect Sunday afternoon at Veteran’s Memorial Park in Watertown, the Mirage Women’s team followed-up their regular season championship by winning the 10th annual CTWSL season-ending tournament with a 5-2 victory over the CT Tides to take home the Gold Bracket trophy. The Mirage Women defeated the West Hartford Wildcats in the first round, then faced the CT Bombers in the semi-final, a rematch of last year’s tournament final won by the Bombers. This year it was the Mirage Women coming out on top and moving onto the finals against the 2nd-seeded Tides, whose victories over the Mirage Gold and Canton earned them their spot in the finals. Mirage Women’s Head Coach Steve Pallotti said, “The third time was a charm,” when accepting the tournament trophy from League Director Al Harrison, explaining that the team had fallen just short the past two years. Coach Pallotti noted that there were several new players on this year’s team which he assembled around a core handful of players that have been with the team since joining the league. The Tides were hoping to add another Gold Bracket trophy to their record after winning the Silver Bracket last year and Gold Bracket in 2015.
Two teams new to the league in 2017 battled it out in the Silver Bracket finals as Rocky Hill defeated the local host Watertown Rapids 9-2. Rocky Hill lost their first round game to the CT Bombers, but won a come-from-behind victory over West Hartford’s Wildcats in the semi-final while the Rapids bounced back from a first round loss to Canton to defeat the Mirage Women and move into the Silver finals.
Our 2017 tournament was a successful conclusion to our 10th season! We wish to thank our teams that participated, our fans who came out to support
our teams and enjoyed some great softball, our umpires, field crew and a special Thanks to Coach John Biello and Watertown for hosting the event at the beautiful Veteran’s Memorial Park fields.