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Show Columbia Team jWins Softball i Title Second Year j The Columbia Iron Mines soft-ball soft-ball team won the Southern Utah Softball Tournament champion-ship champion-ship for the second consecutive year, with a 2 to 1 victory over a powerful team from Enterprise Saturday niht, after reaching the championship battle by three previous victories during , the four-day meet. The champions, after playing rather unimpressive ball in the first two sanies, but being saved by the superlative work of their pitcher, York Nelson, came through sensationally in the two final games to win a clear-cut claim to the title. Nelson pitched pitch-ed sensatimiallv throughout the meet, going to the mound to pitch full games on each of the four nights, and was absolutely invincible. He won the annual outstanding pitcher award by a clear-cut margin in spite of the fact that the entire tournament was dominated by excellent pitching. The Columbia team, after taking tak-ing its opening game against St. George, 7 to 1, in a loosely played play-ed game, came back the second night to squeak past the Utah Construction team, in a game that came very close to becoming "sloppy". The final score was 8 to 6, and although both pitchers, Nelson and Boulter, did very well, numerous errors kept the runs crossing the plate. Friday night Nelson tangled with Jerry Welch of Caliente and in a pitchers' duel, with Nelson shutting out the visitors for a 2 to 0 victory. The championship game was another battle between pitchers, with the Cedar City chucker holding a slight edge over Keith Slaheli for a 2 to 1 victory over the Enterprise team. The Columbia players came through with steady, errorless play in the last two games, giving giv-ing the pitcher fine support throughout. Chet Cripps, leftfielder for the Columbia team came through with a nice play in the championship cham-pionship battle to save the game for his team. With Columbia leading 2 to 0, and with two Enterprise En-terprise runners on base and no one down, he made a nice running run-ning catch of a short fly and doubled a runner trying to score from third. Enterprise gained the finals by defeating Pioche 6 to 4 in a well played game Thursday night and drew a bye Friday night. Tony Melissa, dynamic Enterprise Enter-prise catcher, was selected as the outstanding player of the tournament, tourna-ment, and was awarded a gold watch, contributed by W. F. Mul-lett, Mul-lett, in recognition of his fine work. Melissa not only played unusually un-usually fine ball both on defense and offense, but was also the spark-plug and leader of his team. The Desert Mound team of Cedar Ce-dar City, won consolation honors, defeating the Bradshavv Firestone team by a score of 11 to 5. After dropping its opening game to Caliente by a 6 to 5 score, the Desert Mound team came back to trim the El Rcy Cafe team by a score of 7 to 4, and pave the way for its consolation win over the Bradshaw team. Brahshaw's de- feated St. George 11 to 7 to get into the consolation final. Trophies were awarded to the champions, runners-up and consolation con-solation winners. The tournament, the fifth annual an-nual meet held at the Lions Softball Soft-ball field, was highly successful, with unusually close games throughout enjoyed by a large crowd each night. The meet was well handled and enthusiastically enthusiastical-ly received by the fans of the area. |