Boyd

Final score. Burlington City Pee Wee Tournament Bracket B Baseball Championship Game. It's coach pitch. Most of the kids played tee ball together last year.

Almost everyone on our team is 7 by now. Couple of 6 year-olds. What a season. Finished 2nd in the division at 8-4. Won 3 games in the tourney to wind up 11-4. I can't even begin to explain how far the players (and coaches) have come. Brian Baute is our head coach. I am one of three assistants. I have had more fun with this team than you can even begin to imagine. Way more fun than the kids have had. Brian has had fun too. Maybe more than me. He has been a most excellent coach for these kids. We've seen it all. Bad teams. Good teams. Over-the-top coaches. Lousy coaches. Everything. Brian has struck the exact right balance of intensity and positive support. There's no point to doing this if you aren't going to try to win games. However, you don't want to get too carried away for all the obvious reasons. Our kids have had a blast under him. They've handled winning with class. They've handled losing with class. They've played loose most of the time. I couldn't be more proud of them.

Championship Game Recap

You read the score right in the title. It was a slugfest. The Elon White Sox prevailed in 6 innings as the away team (we were the away team every game of the tourney because Brian doesn't know how to call heads or tails correctly apparently).

We started last night at about 7:30. We scored 7 in the top of the 1st. They scored 2 with no one out when lightning halted play.

We were rescheduled for tonight at 6:30. Thought we were going to be rained out again with both teams declared co-champs, however we got started at 7 when the approaching storm veered south. They resumed where they left off and took the lead 8-7, I think. We might have only scored two in the 2nd to go up 9-8. They scored 5 in the bottom of the second to make it 13-9. Top of the 3rd, we exploded. Went up 23-13 and had to switch sides due to the 10 run rule in Burlington City. They scored some more. We scored some more (Brian's got the book, maybe he'll fill me in). Ended up 40-26 going into the bottom of the 6th. They scored 3, but we got the necessary outs. Game over. Kids were so happy. Parents were so happy. Coaches were ecstatic.

Let me brag on Jack. I don't think he struck out (They get five pitches from a coach to put the ball in play. If they don't, they're out.) during the entire tournament (15-20 times up). He may have actually had a hit in every plate appearance now that I think about it. He also played shortstop for us. He was a stud there. He caught a line drive in the 2nd game that was huge to keep them from rallying. He tagged several runners and got several forces at 2nd. He also made good throws across the diamond to 1st and did a solid job of cutting off the outfield. Great kid.

Now on to fall ball in Swepsonville. We'll see what the rest of Alamance County has for us. Also, I'm the head coach for Payne's tee ball team which is made up of 3-5 year-olds. We'll play fall ball a little later at Mt. Hope. It's non-competitive and they try hard when they aren't preoccupied with playing in the infield dirt. Can't wait for that either. Anything to keep my offspring away from soccer.

Update: Better recap here. By better, I mean what really happened.