Still trying to get caught up with everything after being gone, but I’d say our experience at the 15U WWBA went pretty well, albeit a bit weird at the end.
We ended up in the 15U EC Astros pool. In fact, our 5-4 loss to them was their closest game of the entire tournament, which they went on to win.
Two throwing errors and a couple of walks sealed the deal. We did give them a scare in the top of the 7th when one of our guys hit a bomb over the LC field fence to bring it within a run. Coaching 1st, I heard the Astros infielders asking what the score was. They had thought we’d tied the game.
We ended up with a tie to a team in pool play. This team ended up leaving the tournament early, after our game. This was on Monday. We had no clue they left until the following day.
This gave two teams in our pool forfeit wins from this team leaving. One of those teams (which we beat on Tuesday) would have ended up 5-2 in our pool, and we would have ended up 4-2-1. So of course we had no chance to advance to the play off round.
After winning our last pool play game early Wednesday morning, we all headed home. I happened to have my son and two other players riding with me. We stopped and ate lunch, not in a hurry, since we knew we staying the night in SC.
Driving along, the boys sleeping in the car, I checked my phone to see what the playoff bracket looked like. The last page I had accessed was our pool standings page. When it refreshed, it showed us 5-2, not 4-2-1. Since we only allowed 15 runs in the 7 games of pool play, that locked up 2nd place in our pool.
I immediately pulled over and called Perfect Game. Turns out since the team that had tied us left early, they decided to make all their games forfeits. This advanced us to the playoffs. We never received a call or notification regarding this, so after discussing it with them they were willing to make our game a late evening game.
I started calling parents / players and quickly realized most of our guys couldn’t make it back, some were most of the way home.
Luckily several players had stayed at the hotel and a couple more were actually at Six Flags.
I had three with me (one who was hurt) and our 9th player was actually still in Georgia, simply because their vehicle had broke down and was getting repaired.
I turned around and back we drove, making the game just in time.
We ended up playing the #3 seed. With only 9 players we ended up giving them a good run and lost 4-1. We ended the game with bases loaded. Not bad considering that was their lowest scoring game of the tournament.
All in all, I’m proud of how well the boys played as a whole. We only allowed 19 runs through 8 games. We had five of our guys make the All Tournament Team listing as well.
I hate that we have to play the “What if” game regarding our play off game. We were missing a couple of our starters, and arguably two of our better hitters, one who had two homeruns and multiple extra base hits on the week.
As far as I know were the only VA team to make the playoffs, although the Canes Delmarva made it - not sure if they are considered a VA team or not.
Lesson learned. Next time, if there is any question – I’ll be calling and getting an answer.
We’re definitely looking forward to next year.
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