The California A's displayed their offence in the morning, and their defence in the evening, finishing day two of the Scotiabank Canadian Open Fastpitch International Championship in first place in the Women's Elite tournament.
The A's won their second start in as many games with a 12-0 win over Mexico, then received an outstanding two-way effort form pitcher Morgan Melloh in a 1-0 victory over China-Liaoning Sunday at Softball City.
A 10-run fourth inning by the A's broke open a close game against Mexico, setting up the evening tilt between a pair of teams which had won their first two games without conceding a run.
Melloh collected 12 strikeouts while limiting the China-Liaoning offence to two singles in seven innings. She also drove in the game's only run, to lift California to first place in the nine-team tournament.
The A's will play Great Britain at 6:30 p.m. this evening at Softball City. Great Britain played its first two games Sunday, edging Team B.C. 3-1 then blanking indonesia-Jakarta 4-0.
Round robin play in both the Futures (under-18) Selects and Showcase (under-16) Selects categories concluded Sunday.
The Surrey Storm '95 and North Delta Sunfire both finished with 4-0 records, finishing atop their respective groups and earning byes through to tomorrow's semifinal games. Both teams will play at 1 p.m. at Softball City, each squad hoping for a win that would put them in the championship game at 6:30 p.m.
The Fleetwood Force '96 earned the top-seed for the eight-team Showcase Select playoff, but received a scare in their first playoff game this afternoon (Monday). The Force went 4-0, conceding only one run, in round robin play. But they edged the eighth-seed South Surrey Thunder 10-9 in a quarterfinal contest.
Also undefeated after the round robin were the second seed Duncan Dragons and third-seed Surrey Storm '96, and were scheduled to play their quarterfinal later in the day.
Semifinals are tomorrow at 10:30 a.m., with the championship game at 3:30 p.m., all at Softball City.