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Congratulations to both Sandburg and Fenwick. It should be a great game! The first time they met the final score was 4-3 Sandburg. On a personal note I wanted to recognize some of the seniors who are showing great leadership and play on the field. SS Reid Rooney has totaled 7 RBI batting out of the three hole and 1B Rob Bak is riding a hot bat all tournament (especially his 4 for 4 vs. Jacobs).
I know Falsetti is a very good catcher after seeing him over the years compete for the Berwyn team against the various teams my son has played with.
But i also got the chance this summer to witness another very very good catcher ---Matt Mirabell --from Top Tier Prospects and from Mount Carmel..WOW !! This kid has one of the best arms from behind the plate that i have ever seen. I had heard that he was clocked at 1.85 down to second . Can also hit with power. Definitely has to be one of the top 08 D1 prospects . He is one heck of a weapon behind the dish .
bballdad1954- D1 schools frequently email kids before July of their jr year summer. It is a good thing to reach out to the coaches and just shoot them a email describing yourself and expressing your interest because if they know your kid is interested, when they see him the college coach will already know hes interested and take a little bit of a closer look. Make sure your kid sends it though and make sure his grammer is correct. If GPA is a strength make sure to include that.
itsrosy,
Thanks for the kind words. HP did have a great run and it will be interesting next year, as we are one of the 'under the radar' teams that could sneak up on people next year. We played against some great competition in this tournament and it was a nice learning experience. Due to some injuries we had to switch some kids around against Sandburg and we made 4 errors. They are just too good to play that kind of ball against. Prior to this game we played outstanding defense. A tip of the cap to their team and pitcher Will Keuper. We had a few great scoring opportunities but they buckled down each time and closed us down. But, being mainly die hard Cubs fans, it's in our blood to "wait 'til next year". Best luck and wishes to Sandburg and Fenwick in the final.
Sandburg 4 Fenwick 1! Congradualtions to both teams on a great run. Sandburg showed timely hitting, solid defense and great pitching. RHP Greg Billo was the winning pitcher and was name tourny MVP. Steven Kaffel is a very impressive hitter for Sandburg. Congradulations to Fenwick's Reid Rooney and Rob Bak for making All Tournamnet Team.
Congrats to Sandburg--

Now I would love to hear people's thoughts on the significance of this championship and the high school summer league in general.

I know that you only can play the teams on your schedule and that winning a championship requires timely play and talent, but we all know that many kids play legion or other sports during this time.

I guess my question is how much of an indication for next season does the prior summer season have? I would love to hear some quantitative results, perhaps a 1-10 scale, with 10 being very indicative, and a 1 indicating basically meaningless.

How significant is summer league?

ANy thoughts?
CoachB,

I don't think you could have made your case any better. There's no question that up here in the northern part of the state, namely the Chicago area, we have no problem calling anything a State title. I guess it is wrong, both geographically and in spirit to just ignore the fact that 90% of the state didn't participate in this tournament.
We played in a county Bronco league championship game back in the day and the opposing team had an outfielder who was born in Montreal, Canada. He spoke funny French or whatever. Just because we beat his team, (2-1 was the final with me scoring the winning run) our coach had a big sign/banner made that said "1992 Bronco League World Champions." It is still up beyond right field today although the blue and orange paint is a little faded. I always thought this was stretching it a little bit.
Let's try to be factual here guys. I'm not going to get in the argument about it being called a state championship but their are over 150 schools participating in this tournament. This includes schools from the Rockford area, Quad cities, and some schools this year from the city. It has grown just about every year. To be crowned champion in a tournament with 150+ schools participating is a tremendous accomplishment. Call it what you want but Sandburg will be considered a top team next Spring and it will be well deserved. 95-98% of schools not participating? That's simply not true.
My dad still thinks he is cool by wearing his bright red bowling shirt that says 1976 City Champs scripted across the front. It is a real sore subject to bring up how the two bowling alleys across town were not even represented in the tournament. I keep telling my brother to just let it go! The shirt is really embarrassing when he wears it out to Sunday brunch before church.
Well we still havent come up with an actual and factual number of participating teams, but since it is sanctioned by the IHSBCA it is a state championship. All of these other legion leagues and travel teams are fine, but dont resent the fact that Sandburg took home the crown from a very large pool of teams(bigger than any travel tournament that I know of)
CoachB, You should never feel like you have to delete anything that you've said here, IMO. Your knowledge of Illinois HS Baseball so far supercedes most of us on this board, so please keep it coming.

Believe me, I don't have a horse in this race at all. But, playing devil's advocate, while this event is called the IHSBCA State Summer Tournament, you don't see any mention of it on the IHSA website. The IHSA doesn't provide anything regarding this tournament, dates, teams, scores, nadda. Also, if you look who makes up the board of directors of the IHSBCA it is clear that it is exclusively made up of schools in the northern part of our state. That's not a bad thing, it just is what it is. I don't think anyone is taking anything away from the teams that competed and from the eventual winner, Sandburg. Call it semantics or whatever, but if all of the schools in the lower 3/4 part of the state don't participate, can't someone question if this is really a state title, that's all.
Last edited by itsrosy
Life is good; Cubs closing in on first (Phillies just tied it), 143 teams from 8 Regionals in the "whatever" tournament......great baseball for all (except Sox fans). Who cares what it is called......these kids enjoyed playing great baseball..deserve some "atta boys"...........great experience that can be built upon. They faced some good pitchers and played good ball. I didn't see any of the so called "elite" players refusing to play because it was beneath them. 756 or so teams........split between A & AA...so why not say the same about the spring state tournamanet, unless the finalists from both classes play each other? The HP players learned quite a bit and saw what it will take to get to the next level. They realized they have the pitching, defense, and bats to compete. They had fun and are excited about next year, while realizing anything can happen. After all, look at the several "sure thing" teams from this past spring. Nequa Valley, the AA state champ was ranked by PBR as 43rd. NV was in the Glenbard South regional of the IHSBCA.
Last edited by BBFan58

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