World No. 1 USA, No. 3 Puerto Rico, No. 4 Canada and No. 6 Mexico advanced to the Super Round and will play for the softball medals at the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games in Chile’s capital. USA and Puerto Rico will open the Super Round with a 1-0 win-loss record, while Canada and Mexico start with 0-1.
USA and Puerto Rico swept their groups in the Opening Round with three wins in a row and are head to head on top of the Super Round standings. On Wednesday, USA topped Mexico, 7-0, to clinch first place in Group A, while Puerto Rico recovered from a two-run deficit to narrowly defeat Canada, 3-2, in the best game of the tournament so far.
The Super Round will open on Thursday with Mexico facing off against Canada. With both teams at 0-1, the game could decide which team remains in contention for the gold medal. It’s scheduled at 4 p.m. local time. The other three games of the Super Round will be contested on Friday, with Puerto Rico and USA playing a doubleheader, including a head-to-head game between the only two undefeated teams in the tournament.
The top two seeded teams in the Super Round will play the Gold Medal Game on Saturday, at 1 p.m. local time; while third and fourth place will batle for the bronze at 10 a.m.
There are 14 Olympians among the 128 participating players, 13 of them from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The list includes five silver medallists with USA (Ali Aguilar, Ally Carda, Rachel Garcia, Dejah Mulipola and Haylie McCleney); and seven bronze medallists with Canada (Emma Entzminger, Larissa Franklin, Sara Groenewegen, Kelsey Harshman, Janet Leung, Erika Polidori and Natalie Wideman). The other Olympians are Mexican outfielder Stefania Aradillas (Tokyo 2020) and Venezuelan infielder Yuruby Alicart (Beijing 2008).
Since softball’s debut in the Pan American Games in 1979, USA has won nine gold medals, including Lima 2019, the latest edition of the multi-sports event. Canada has won the tournament in the other two editions (1983 and 2015). Puerto Rico has collected three silver medals (1979, 1986 and 1995), while Venezuela has won one (2007). Cuba has four bronze medals to their name.
