This was waiting on the boys in the Team Hotel...
At the stadium...
We lost our first game to Georgia. We should not have lost. We should not have changed pitchers, but in little league, the restrictions on pitch counts are unbelievably crazy low. For our pitcher to be able to pitch again in just 2 days, he could only throw 35 pitches.
This proved to be our downfall because at Regionals, Little League still had the format of taking the top 2 teams from each of the 2 4-team divisions...ideally the top two teams would have the most wins out of the four. We ended up in a 3 way tie, and by some bizarre luck, we were eliminated even though we beat West Virginia in our last game 17-1. Georgia ended up throwing their game against Florida (by not attempting to score any runs, that put Georgia's run differential and Florida's run differential ahead of ours by 0.004). Try explaining that to 12 year olds.
After the Georgia game...our first and only loss this All-Star season:
Here is our coach breaking the news that we had been eliminated. I had told Brendan that in all the world there would be only one Little League team that had not lost their last game. I was wrong.
Our team was devastated. You only get one chance in Little League to go the Little League World Series, and it is your 12 year old season.
One last team huddle...
In our last game during a pitching change, they played YMCA and the umps had a little fun in the outfield...
Brendan hit a home run in the game against Florida to score our first run. I was so proud of him and so happy that he was able to get one more home run before moving up to the 60' x 90' field.
When we returned from Georgia (and it felt like someone had died), Brendan's grandmother had left this for him...these are balloons in colors of his travel ball team.
To help ease the pain a little, we went down to Oak Island for a long weekend.
The weekend before school started back, Jackson played in his first Twins tournament. The boys played very well and came in 2nd place!
The kid's first day of school was August 25th...
Emma started 1st grade this year.
Brendan started 8th grade, and Jackson started 6th grade (both in middle school)!
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