At the end of the baseball season beginning in 5th grade each coach is asked to submit two or three players to play in a Metro league tournament called the August Classic. The players from Owatonna get placed with other players from southern Metro teams. This season Noah was asked to play on this team.
That meant going to Lakeville 6 out of 7 days this past week! Mike joined us for the first two days and then he left to fish in Canada with my dad and father-in-law. That meant mom and I were on our own for the rest of the week and weekend. My sister also joined us for each game.
The other player from Noah's team selected to play was on vacation so Noah's cousin, Zach, was asked to play on the team as well. We were all super excited the boys would get to play together on this elite team!
I have to brag a bit here. From the Meet-and-Greet on Monday night the "boys from Owatonna" were a huge hit. I heard the coaches discussing their abilities, I heard people on the bleachers whispering about how good they were and as soon as they found out I was the mother/aunt of those two.....I got lots of compliments and even a fist bump congratulating me on how well they both played.
There were 12 players on the team which meant at any given time there were 3 kids sitting on the bench. The coach did a great job of rotating the kids into the game and no player ever sat longer than a half inning. I remember in the last game, Noah and Zach were both sitting at the same time and that didn't go over well with the gentlemen behind me. They could not figure out why the coach would sit BOTH Owatonna players at the same time.
The weather could not have been more perfect. Temps were in the high 70's and low 80's, partly cloudy skies, slight breeze.....it was amazing. The team started off with a loss. A bad loss actually, losing 8 to 1. Made me a little nervous about the rest of the week.
Another bad start was Connor getting hit in the cheek by a thrown ball.
It hit him on his right cheek and left him with a chipmunk-like appearance on that side and lots of bruising. This picture doesn't show the black shiner he got later. He had a hard time chewing for about three days. It was a horrible experience for everyone. The poor boy that threw the ball came over three times to check to see how Connor was doing. He felt so bad. It was really kind of him. The next day at the next game the boy rushed over to see how Connor was doing again. We were just glad it missed his eye and his temple.
The next day we played and won! They following day we played and won again!
Saturday we played two games and won both (one was a great comeback too. There is something about coming from behind to win. It's just that much sweeter!)
There wasn't a team that didn't have at least one loss in pool play which meant we made it to the championship game on Sunday!
The game started badly with us behind by 4 runs and the game seemed to be speeding by. We needed more innings to come back! All of a sudden it's the 6th inning and we were still behind by 3 (they play 7 innings).
Noah started off the bottom on the 6th with a double.
Zach got on behind Noah and the third player did too. That meant bases loaded. The boy pitching at the time was up to bat and hit a huge triple to the fence, over the right fielders head scoring three runs! We scored another run in that inning and that put us up by 1.
All we had to do was hold them and we won the game.
We did just that! Our pitcher that inning was amazing and struck out two kids, including the third out to win the Championship game!
Noah and Zach had a blast, we met all kinds of great people, and it was such a great way to end Noah's baseball season.
Thanks for a great week of baseball, boys!
Now it's on to Fall Ball!
LB
