The drive was worth it!

Tournament Championship #2 on the season. Ending the year in grand style! A game ending home run in the semi-final game to push the team into the finals and then a game ending grand slam in the final. For the first time in 5 years of tournaments at this same location every Memorial Day weekend, the team ended with a victory. My little champion played well, kept his head up when things did not go well, and ended the day happily spitting a sunflower seed at me as I took this photo. Sigh….More photos below, including one of the team’s #1 fans:

My parents watching the medal ceremony at the end of the game 🙂 They made the drive both days and stayed for all three games today and were the only people *not* bringing a player themselves to do that.

The team, post ceremony, and with instructions to share their goofy faces.

Travel ball now shuts down until September. We will miss it. These are our friends we have been with in some cases as far back as 6 years. It will get harder and harder to keep them together as they get older so we savor every season with these people. We will have a year end party on Sunday and I promise there will be some tears. Last year we were heartbroken because they lost their last game in this tournament and because everyone loved the coach we had and wanted him back again. But the club has a core philosophy that we don’t repeat coaches back to back because the kids need to learn form different managers. It’s worked well all along and sure enough, our manager this year was different, but taught the kids a lot, kept them working together as a team and moved their development forward. I happen to think that the manager who gets this team as 12 year olds in the fall is one damn lucky guy.