Baseball, Spring into Summer

So as usual this time of year, we have been consumed by baseball. Both boys played North Boise Little League again, Tanner in AAA and Jake in Majors. I managed Tanners team again and continue to serve on the NBLL Board of Directors.

AAA - Tanner was on the Yankees again this season. This was the first year that he needed to be drafted as he hit the magic 9 year old season. I wanted him to play with as many of his friends from the prior year as possible, so I used most of my first round picks on 9 year olds in a division that spans from 9-11. End result was that he played with his buddies, but the 11 year olds that were left when I started drafting them weren't the greatest players, so we struggled. We started the season at 0-5 before we were able to win our first game. We ended the season at 2-8, but won our first tournament game which was a lot of fun, but then lost the next one and our season was over. The team definitely got better towards the end, but the coaches and I had to work our butts off to get them there. We have a VERY young team and our 9 year olds were good, but they couldn't carry us against older and bigger teams. We just finished the AAA season yesterday and Tanner and I went and handled the field prep and watched the game. 

Majors -  Jake was hoping to get drafted up into Intermediate's this year, but ended up staying in Majors due to the number of 14 year olds that we had this year (it's a long story, just trust me). He got drafted by if not THE best, one of the best managers in the league and had a VERY good season. His team ended up winning the championship, meaning he has been on back to back Majors Divisions Champions. He played a lot this year, pitching, catching and playing second base. He got better, but decided NOT to play more baseball this Summer and use his Summer Athletic Budget for basketball camp. 

Outlaw -  Tanner didn't get enough baseball during Spring and is playing on an Under 9 "Outlaw" (meaning non-league affiliated team) team this Summer. One of the other AAA Managers and I put a team together for this Summer call the Road Runners. We played a two day tournament over Memorial Day weekend finishing third overall. We played against a lot of league "All Star" teams (they just can't be called that yet) and did really well. We won our first game on Friday night 15-0, they won our second game on Saturday morning 10-0. Then we played a Nampa team who had a really good pitcher, and by that time our kids were struggling with their third game and second in the heat and we ended up losing. If we had played them again, I'm convinced we would have won. That loss put us in the 3rd/4th place game. We beat the Twin Falls Cowboys to take third place in our first outing. Tanner and his friends (there are several on that team as well) had a great time and really loved the experience, although he was a little disappointed because he thought we were going to get to stay in a hotel for the tournament. When I asked him on the way home, what his favorite part of the experience was, he said, " that everyone else on my team could play". It is a TOTALLY different experience that regular season where there are 3-4 good players on each team and the balance of kids struggle to this were the whole roster is full of kids who are good and can play (and love) baseball.  Tanner caught (his favorite position this season) and played Center Field, he hit a couple of RBI doubles in the tournament also. We are hoping to put the Outlaw uniforms back on after All Stars to finish out the Summer and roll into Fall Baseball. 


All Stars -  The Outlaw team is a run up to All Stars. The same AAA Manager and I are running the All Star program at the 9/10 age group for the league this year. We have tryouts next month and then play two run up tournaments in June prior to starting the Little League District tournament in July. It's tournament baseball which is tough, schedule-wise; two to three games per day in the Summer heat in hot baseball uniforms, so it will be interesting to see how they handle it. It's a bit of a bear from an organization standpoint, so getting it up and running is a lot of work but it should be a lot of fun and again a situation where all of the kids will be really good players. We have quite a bit of talent at this age group and will actually have to make cuts to get down to the 12 person roster. That hasn't been the case the last few years. I'm looking forward to a fun Summer of baseball and will get better about posting updates and we continue to play this summer.