By: Adam Morissette

Canadian Baseball Network

GIJANG, Korea- For the first time since 2008 and only the second time in history, Team Canada will play for a gold medal at the WBSC Women’s Baseball World Cup.

Canada clinched a spot in the championship contest with a 2-1 win over Chinese Taipei in a game that saw Canadian starter Amanda Asay (Prince George, BC) toss a complete game and strike out eight batters.

Box Score - Canada 2 Chinese Taipei 1

With the score deadlocked at one in the seventh, Canada’s Jenn Gilroy (Mississauga, ON) stepped to the plate with the bases loaded, infield in and one out and hit a hard groundball that the Taipei shortstop had to dive to stop. When she got to her feet, she had only one play to make as she got the force out at third, Kelsey Lalor (Red Deer, AB) crossed home plate with the go-ahead run.

From there, Asay, as she’d done all game, went after the Taipei hitters and got a strikeout and a couple groundouts to end the game.

“It feels great,” said Asay of the win. “I was able to establish my fastball early (in the game) and then changed speeds a little bit as the game went on.

“My defence played amazing behind me and Jenn (Gilroy) did a really good job behind the plate.”

Canada played flawless defence and got a couple fine plays in key situations as Kate Psota (Burlington, ON) made a diving catch at first to leave a runner on second base in the first, while Nicole Luchanski (Edmonton, AB) did the same to leave a runner on second in the fifth.

“When you get great pitching and defence like we did today, it’s usually a good recipe for a win,” said Canadian Manager André Lachance. “We battled all game and manufactured the runs when we needed to.

“I’m so incredibly proud of our group and the way we’ve played so far.”

Taipei opened the scoring in the fourth using a leadoff double and sacrifice bunt to put a runner on third with just one out. Asay made a tremendous play fielding a dribbler out in front of the mound to record an out at first and keep the runner on third, but a wild pitch followed and Taipei led by one.

Canada was quick to respond and it was Pascale Jalbert (St-Honoré, QC) who lined a single to centre to lead off the fifth before moving to second on an errant pickoff throw. Jenna Flannigan (Cornwall, ON) then dropped down a sacrifice bunt to move Jalbert to third and Kate Psota (Burlington, ON) followed with a sac fly to left that knotted the score.

The gold medal game will be a rematch of the 2008 championship contest where Canada fell to Japan and settled for silver. Japan has won every Women’s Baseball World Cup since then to enter the 2016 event as the four-time defending champions.

“Japan has been the best in the world for quite some time and hasn't lost (here) yet so we know that we’ll have to play our best game of the tournament to beat them,” said Lachance. “We respect them, but we can play with them. We’ll give them everything we have tomorrow.”

The 2008 squad featured six players (Asay, Psota, Luchanski, Ashley Stephenson, Autumn Mills and Melissa Armstrong) who are members of this year’s team, while Lachance was the Manager.

“It feels great to be back in the gold medal game,” he said. “It’s been a long time and it’s not every day that you get to play for a world championship.

“We’re not happy just to be in the gold medal game, we want to win it.”

UP NEXT: Sunday’s gold medal game will take place at 6pm local time/5am EDT…You can watch the game live on the WBSC’s YouTube channel.

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