What a Father's Day gift!!

For the last couple of years, we have gotten beat out of the Smyrna Championship. Determined not to let it happen again, these Bulldogs pulled together everything they had and played their hearts out.

We had our first game at 6:15PM Friday night. The boys didn't play as well as they could have but it was still enough to win against the Grassland Bulldogs 9-6.

SAFE!!

Then we had a game Saturday morning at 8AM against the Showtime Black out of M'boro and won 8-3. The boys typically aren't morning players, but they still did well. And this left us all day to play. A few of us went to Wave Country and let the boys play all day. As you can see, they had a blast and got some sun!

Sunday morning was the play-offs. Even though we won our pool play, we had given up too many runs to be 1st seed. We were seed #5 and our first game was against the Tornadoes...they are a really good baseball team that we have played many times over the past few years. We beat them and were off to a great start.

The next team we played was from Indiana. We played them once last year - the Smithville Gators. This was probably the hardest game we've played so far (except for those 11 year olds last weekend). They scored 3 runs in the first inning and the score remained 3-0 for 5 innings. In the 6th inning, we tied it up 3-3. In International USSSA rules, you can put the last out from the previous inning on second base to speed the finish up. So we put our last out on 2nd....and after a series of walks and hits, he got in making the score 4-3. So it was their turn to start a runner on 2nd base.....after a dynamic double play and then a third out....we won that game. It was a fantastic game! VERY nerve wrecking.

This brought us to the championship. We were up against the North Alabama Colts. We played them last year too. We got a good jump on them in the first inning with 5 runs and that was enough to bring their heads down. We put at least one on the board each inning and though did score some, we won the game 9-4. Dawson Kula pitched the entire game and got the championship game ball! We didn't get home until after 10PM....long day, yet very rewarding.







These wins are important....not only just because we are winning, but because we receive USSSA points for wins, etc and that helps with our seeding when we go to Orlando for the World Series....which I just found out, we are the only TN team invited!!! Three weeks away!!!!



Anyway, next weekend we are in LaVergne and the following weekend we are in Franklin for the Nationals. Then we are off to Orlando. Our current record is 25-8. Go Dawgs!!! And Happy Father's Day to all our DADS!!!! We got some pics with all our dads, unfortunately, mine turned out blurry!