Mid-May Means SW Little League Action Around Town
|
||||||||||
| Printer Friendly Story View |
Southwest Little League held their annual Inter-League tournament this past weekend at Kolb School.
(MyBayCity Photo by Kevin Leahy)
The tournament is a sign-up tournament where all the kids who signed up were randomly selected to play on different teams with their peers from the whole league.
"We had great participation this year, almost 100 signed up with 58 in the minors," said coaching parent Larry Vanmullekom whose son, Logan plays for KFC.
The unusual thing about this tournament is that it's totally run by parents and volunteers. The regular team coach's are not allowed to coach but the parents are expected to and they all were excited about the opportunity.
"It's baseball, nothing but good karma out here this weekend," said Mike Freed, whose son Cody was getting ready to play and whose wife was coaching.
(MyBayCity Photo by Kevin Leahy)
That's how it is over at South West. If your child is playing, you're involved somehow.
"We help out anyway we can, chalk lines, keep book, sell raffle tickets, my wife spent a couple hours in the concession stand yesterday," said Jim Grigg, whose wife Denise was standing there looking forward to her son Jimmy playing in the next game.
"Look Jim, they have him warming up," she said as we both looked over to see Jimmy warming up pitching with the "parent," coach.
Field a team with kids you know very little about is a unique situation for these one time parent/coach's.
The teams are numbered one through eight and no-one knows who they will be playing for.
"These kids really enjoy the opportunity to play with different kids when it's not so competitive," said Denise Grigg, Denise did mention that her son's team was undefeated though. Competitive or not, these kids and parents want to win.
"Everyone helps out down here, it's just the way it is in South West," added Grigg.
(MyBayCity Photo by Kevin Leahy)
The Southwest Little League complex is in great shape as they have three fields that are neatly cut and have crisp chalk lines on all of them.
They also have two batting cages between the fields where parents can "warm," up their youngsters before games with a few pitches, although Luke MCCurry had a good line for his mom who was throwing him pitch after pitch out of the strike zone, "mom maybe you can try taking off your coat and throw a few," said Luke who received a good laugh from his dad who was catching for him.
(MyBayCity Photo by Kevin Leahy)
Southwest Little League also has a "coach pitch," league for the younger players aged 5-6 -- who would otherwise have a tough time seeing many hittable balls.
The kids are loving it by the looks on their faces as they were warming up for the next game, they seemed very comfortable in their environment. They were having a lot of fun without the pressures of overzealous over competitive parents and it was refreshing, after all it is just a kids game right.
(MyBayCity Photo by Kevin Leahy)
In other action this week in SW, Hayden Clements of Bosco Food Service stroked two hits helping his own cause as he pitched a three hitter with eight strikeouts in a 8-2 win over Supreme Carpet.
Taylor Schepper of Harpman Chiropractic fired ten Ks against Autotec in a 4-3 win while Tyler Snover and Mitchell Ferguson knocked in two runs apiece to account for the scoring. Zac Goik and Jacob Alarie both had two hits for Autotec.
(MyBayCity Photo by Kevin Leahy)
If you have any game highlights or pictures we could use in a future article please feel free to email Kevin@MyBayCity.com to have them included, be sure to have the correct spelling of names provided.
(MyBayCity Photo by Kevin Leahy)
| Printer Friendly Story View |
|
|
Kevin Leahy |
|
|
|
Printer-Friendly Story View
0200 Nd: 04-20-2024 d 4 cpr 0
12/31/2020 P3v3-0200-Ad.cfm
SPONSORED LINKS
12/31/2020 drop ads P3v3-0200-Ad.cfm