What a Day!!!

I will confess that I was dreading the day today. Will played in a baseball tournament with a team of 11 other great baseball players his age. They played in a travel ball tournament with guys that play every other week all year around. No, we don’t have a travel team and I hope we don’t ever get into it as much as those guys do. If you read my blog on a regular basis you read about us playing in a tournament last summer in Dothan. The tournament we played in today was the same organization that we played with last year. Some of the same teams as well.
A couple of weeks ago, some of our players dads decided we should all get back together and play in the tournament this weekend in Enterprise. So, we did. We had one practice and then thanks to the rain we were able to use Coach Ron’s training center at Troy Baseball to get in some batting practice. So now I guess you can see why I was dreading today. If you read back to my post last summer you would know that we were slaughtered in every game we played. It was awful, an experience I was not looking forward to. Not to mention having to pack up 2 other kids and a baby for the day. (which thanks to Neemama and Papa who took Kate home after game 2) But anyway, the way these tournaments work is …the 1st part of the day are the pool games. Once all the pool games are played, the teams are seeded. Once you get your seed the actual tournament begins.
The 1st game of the day began at 8:30. Thank God we didn’t play that one. We played the 10:00 game against the Dothan Cardinals which is the team that won the last tournament that was played a couple of weeks ago. They beat us 22 – 5…the 10 run rule. It was not even fun to watch. Our next game was at 1:00. We played the Mudcats also from Dothan who also beat us by the 10 run rule 14 -4.
There were 6 teams in the tournament and we were seeded 6!! Our first game was at 4:30 and we played the #3 seeded team, the Dirt Devils, who also by the way are from Dothan. We beat them by the 10 run rule this time!!! 21- 5!!! We were on fire! I could not even believe it. I was thinking…okay this is it. We can head on over to Daleville to eat dinner at McLin’s! Oh well, not yet. Next game we met up with the Mudcats. The team that beat us 14-4 in the first game we played them. They had their own bus, tour bus that is; that they rested in between games. They even changed uniforms! What good it did them! We came from behind in the last inning to beat them 12-10! They even had the last bat and we held them!! Their mouths were in the dirt!! So this, our 2nd win sent us to the championship game to play the Dothan Cardinals for another game. By this time, our kids were tired. They had already played 4 games 3 ½ which were in the blazing sun and ½ of the number of games we play in a recreation season! We played a great game; we got beat 4-12 and were 2nd place in the tournament! Not bad for a team that only practiced 1 time together!! I am so proud of our team. We had a great day and the boys got in a lot of practice. Maybe it will help us all to finish up our rec. season! Between our 12 players, we are on 4 different teams. Being together for a day of baseball helps bonds great friendships, it really is going to be hard to going back to competing against each other.
We ended the day with a celebration dinner at Mellow Mushroom. I am so glad the boys had this experience together. I know it is one they will take with them for many years! Way to Go Troy Americans - 2nd place in the Boll Weevil Bash!! I am proud of you!!
This is what Drew, Ben, Walker and Brady did most of the day!
Wouldn't you know Kate would find something to climb on!
waiting for their time to bat!
Will got a great hit every time he got up to bat and only had 1 stike out (I think!)



















For all of you that think Will looks like Jason...well, in this picture he looks just like my sister, Elizabeth!