Four-day weekend! Whohoo! Under other circumstances, we would have been out camping. But the combination of baseball and rain put a crimp in those plans.
This past weekend was the first All-Star tournament for Nicholas' team. Originally scheduled to play in the Richland tourney, it was decided to swap the All-Stars and Tournament teams. The Pasco tournament had the tougher competition so we went there instead, sending our Tournament Team to Richland.
Our first game in pool play (in which our pool looked to be the tougher of the two) was supposed to be Friday night at 6:15 against Richland's All-Star team (also playing in Pasco). A dumping of rain caused the delay of the game just before ours (which didn't finish until 8pm) and cancellation of ours.
Saturday saw us play the team from Vancouver, and walk away with a 4-1 win. Nicholas pitched innings 5 and 6, and he did a great job on the mound!
Our second game (on Sunday morning) was versus Mercer Island. We'd heard that this team was tough - that they charge a $500 nonrefundable deposit just to have your child tryout for the team. Followed by an additional $2K (at least) if he/she makes the team. They play year-round so we were sure we'd have our work cut out for us. And sadly, we ended up losing the game, 7-1.
Our final game in pool play was the makeup game against Richland. The rainout bumped our game from Sunday night to early Monday morning (6:45 a.m.). But even in the early morning, our guys brought their "A" game and beat Richland. Nicholas was on the mound for the final inning and did his thing.
We ended up 2-1 in our pool, in second behind Mercer Island. Our crosstown rivals were in the other pool and they were undefeated.
Memorial Day saw our first game in bracket play. Based on seeding, we played the 3rd place team from the other pool (Gig Harbor) which we ended up winning 12-5 (with two solid innings of pitching by Nicholas). That put us in a game against our rivals -- the KA All-Stars.
It's always a great game when our two teams meet and this proved to be no exception. Unfortunately, we had one bad inning where we let them score 7 and put us behind by 9. Not wanting to be 10-runned, our boys fought back. They were able to get their bats going and cut the lead to within 3. Unfortunately, we ran out of innings and took the loss.
That put us in the consolation game...against Mercer Island. Turns out, the Richland All-Stars were able to knock off the mighty Mercer Island team to win a shot at KA. Our boys got behind early, 4-1. They remembered the loss to Mercer and didn't want a repeat of it. So, they hunkered down and got to business. They started hitting and played some tough defense. Once again, Nicholas pitched the 6th and final inning, and the team took 3rd place in tourney winning 9 to 4.
It was a nice way to end Memorial Day...with a memorable win.
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