I am sharing this now as this weekend was a wonderful display of what a great group of parents, coaches, and young men we are fortunate enough to pal around with every summer. Our team has always had great winning records in the past, winning many tournaments and competing with many of the top programs in the country. This year we have had some struggles and tough losses. We have played up a year in many tournamnts and with many boys in H.S. ball and football during weekdays practicing together has been very tough. Thru this are head coach has made time for any player who wanted one on one time for batting or pitching.
Anyway, last weekend we played in a tournament with 2 games sat and 3 on Sunday with the first requiring the boys to get up at 5 a.m. Because of injury we had (2 of our regular pitchers) only 9 players. Many of the players had to play out of position some were they had never played before. The boys never complained and took it as a challenge.
We won all of our games and made it to the championship. By this time we had pitched all our regular pitchers pitching 2 shutouts on Sunday morning (I believe 3 total hits)(one by my boy
After playing 4 games in 24hrs and all playing every inning of every game they had to play a team that had 20 kids many who hadn't played yet. They played hard but a few miscues in first inning cost them 6 runs and they ended up on the short end of a 9-2 game. The 2 kids who pitched in this game did an awesome job as they rarley have pitched for us before and after 1st inning (which included a E for 2 runs and a couple of dinkers) they kept us in game. I was impressed but not surprized that our coach did not overuse his regular pitchers (the coach of the other team let his kid pitch over 120 pitches 15U --and show alot of attitude as well as catcher talking back to coach).
The kids on the other team talked back to there coach and after game coach said how tough it was to put up with 15 year olds--are coach told him he had no problems like that our boys are respectful. Watching and listing to the parents of these kids during game it was easy to see were the kids attitudes came from. Thankfully this teams attitude is not the norm in summer ball. We were gracious in defeat and proud of the 9 boys who toughed it out.
We had a long drive home and the talk with my son on lessons learned that weekend and memories made will last a lifetime. I am so happy that my son is on a team that sees more then just a talented baseball player but a talented respectful young man. I am not the word smith many posters are on this site , I just wanted to share my joy that my family has had and the luck of having such a wonderful baseball experince. Thanks
