The match between Manse PP and Pori’s Pesäkarhuje sounds like a meeting between two top teams, looking back at recent seasons. In light of this season, the situation is different.
Aino Paloniemi,
Henri Pitkänen
broadcasts the women’s Superpesis regular season match between Manse PP and Pori Pesäkarhut. Shipping on Wednesday 10.7. TV2 and Areena at 18:00.
The season of Pori Pesäkarhu, the reigning Finnish champion in the Women’s Super Pes, has progressed with minor wins and the team is currently on a five-game losing streak.
The team has one win out of nine matches. Head coach in his first season in Pori Jussi Haapakoski locates the problems in the inside game, where the necessary successes have not been achieved in the last matches and especially the home run has produced challenges.
– We get a lot of secondary mistakes and so-called stupid pieces, for example in booth lifts. When it’s difficult, playing becomes timid and fear states are created.
Efforts have been made to increase self-confidence precisely with indoor game successes and game-like exercises, says Haapakoski.
The main opponent of the week is Manse PP, which is second in the regular season. Last season’s finalists will meet twice this week – on Wednesday in Tampere and again in Pori on Friday.
Haapakoski sees back-to-back encounters as a positive thing. The season’s first regular season match in Pori ended 2–0 for the Tampere team.
– Now we can measure each other properly. At the same time, there is strong belief that our course will turn this week.
Awakening through concrete changes
Second in the league, Manse has 13 wins and 38 points from 15 matches. Päsäkarhui has seven wins out of 16 matches. In the regular season, the people of Pori are in seventh place with 21 points. A direct quarter-final place among the top six is currently behind hard work.
Haapakoski emphasizes that the atmosphere of the reigning champion team has remained good, open and honest throughout the season, even though it has not always been pleasant.
– If we still got into a fight there, we would tighten the deadlock even tighter. The fact that the atmosphere is really good helps in a way to live through these difficult situations.
Pori has sought to boost its performance, for example by appointing the team’s long-term background figure as its second game manager Seppo Arbelius. Arbelius, who left the sport in 2021, returned to the team’s strength in the spring, initially as a sport coach.
Despite the challenging internal game, there are also flashes of light and, among other things, the top team has worked during the early season. The fast-footed man who switched from Maila to Pori in Joensuu Johanna Pirskanen has been hitting the field with good percentages, and he leads the league in strikeouts with 79 strikeouts.
Päsäkarhut has been able to create enough situations to increase the score bag, but it has been painful to get home and, for example, runs have been created extremely rarely with free hits from back situations.
A difficult situation for the coach as well
Before his current position, Haapakoski worked, among other things, as the game manager of the Pattijoki Sportsmen’s men’s super tennis teams and as the second game manager both in Vimple and most recently in Sotkamo. The experienced Haapakoski hasn’t sensed a championship hangover in the Pori team or a waning of the will to win after several years of success.
The will is there, even though the people of Pori have five consecutive home defeats. During the games, however, Haapakoski does not pay attention to, for example, the home crowd and its potential pressure.
– It’s probably quite natural that a knife comes out in a situation like this, and it’s usually just as well.
– But we do focus on our own doing and the things we can influence. If you started listening to the crowd’s shouting, then the game management would be even more uncomfortable than it is now.
Haapakoski emphasizes the importance of the support he receives in difficult times and mentions his own father as a mentor. Among the sports people, especially Sotkamon’s Jymyn, who last piloted the championship in the previous season Mikko Kuosmanen has been an important person for Haapakoski.
There is also a strong culture of colluding among the game managers. Among other things, Haapakoski reveals that he has coached Pesäkarhut twice in the previous three years to become champions, and this season he has taken over as the men’s manager of Hyvinkää Tahko Jarkko Pokela is together with another former Pesäkarju game director Sami Österlundin with showed his support.
– A big thank you that they have contacted us and want to help. Discussion help has indeed come from all over Finland.
Haapakoski emphasizes that sometimes it’s important to let your thoughts air and completely shut out baseball. That’s what he does most often, e.g. his brother, who has had a long super washing career, the all-time pioneer king Sami Haapakoski with.
broadcasts the women’s Superpesis regular season match between Manse PP and Pori Pesäkarhut. Shipping on Wednesday 10.7. TV2 and Areena at 18:00.