USSSA Elite World Series - Orlando

What a week!! Most of us started the journey with a little pre-vacation to the beach. Austin and I went to Pensacola and saw the Blue Angels from the beach. Some others went to Daytona and others went to Cocoa Beach.

Opening ceremonies were Sunday morning with pool play games on Sunday (6-6), Monday (5-5) and Tuesday (6-5). We tied our first two games and won our third one.

Tournament play began on Wednesday. We won Wednesday (10-2), lost Thursday (8-0, which put us in the loser's bracket), won our first game on Friday (13-0) and lost our second one (7-4) which put us out of the tournament. We placed 13th out of 32 teams......being invited was an honor and these teams were the elite of the elite. The boys played pretty well, but not as good as they are capable of on a consistent basis against teams like we faced.

That is pretty much it in a nutshell. Below are several pictures...between games we were able to enjoy the different theme parks, hanging by the pool, putt-putt golf, dinners out, etc. Our baseball family had a wonderful week.

We did have one mishap.....John Turner took a pitch to the face and ended up with a mild concussion, chipped teeth and a shiner to beat 'em all. He's better now and was out the next day at Universal Studios! We wish him the best for a speedy recovery!

Margaritaville!

Zoe's friend

Don throwing anything in his way into the pool.

All the boys got a chance at being thrown!

Zoe's rocket shoot.

The boys relaxing in the shade prior to play.

Austin swinging the bat - not sure if he made contact with this one.

The boys after our final loss.

Cody on the back 9.

Pitching....

Austin, Dawson and John at Islands of Adventure.

After some water ride we got talked into.....

The boys with the dinosaur!

Austin and Keith on Dr. Suess's Train (this is the only one Keith wasn't scare of - hehehe)

Yes - we all rode that one.

Awwww....aren't they sweet!

Margaritaville

More Bulldog Family.

I think that is Maddox - not sure....

Some of the mom's at opening ceremonies.

This is where we played!

Thank you for following us all year long. We had a great season. Not quite as successful as last year, but we still finished with a 34-12-2 year record. I will start a new blog for the 11 year old season which starts this fall. Stay tuned! :o)

Started off strong at the Nationals.....and then....

Well, this was a weird weekend altogether. Not our typical Friday night to Sunday ball weekend. Since it was the 4th of July, this was a major tournament with a full three+ days. We actually started Thursday afternoon with the skills competition and pin trading. The boys really did well. Dawson Hamilton won second place in the homerun derby with a total of 4 home runs. The kid that beat him only hit 5. Then Austin, Maddox, Cody, Ty and Julian placed second in the "Around the Horn" competition with a time of 6.13 seconds. The winners had 6.03.....we were beat by 1/10 of a second. So the boys really did well.

After opening ceremonies and competitions, we all went to Hooter's to celebrate Hamilton's 11th birthday. Yes, 10 preadolescent boys all in Hooter's....have you seen the posters on the walls lately??

Our first games were Friday morning at 8AM and 9:45AM. The first team was a former rec league team and we beat them 27-0....in just 2.5 innings. Towards the end, we were getting out on purpose to end the game. It was a sad site really. The second game wasn't much better. We won 13-1 and the only run scored was due to a call the ump made because he felt sorry for them. Either way, we won!

We spent the rest of the day goofing off and getting ready for the 4th of July fireworks celebration at the Rec Park in Smyrna. We had a fundraiser selling funnel cakes. The line seemed to never end. We made almost $700 for Disney. The fireworks were amazing as always and the boys had a great time.

Our next two pool games were Saturday night at 6:45 and 8:30 PM. When we arrived at 5:45 for warmups, the games before us were an hour behind and we didn't start our first game until 8:15PM. At the end of the 1st inning it was 5-4, them. We were up to bat and had just tied the game, had two runners in scoring position and one out and Hamilton was up to bat (oh, by the way, he parked TWO on Friday) when the game was called due to storms.

When we got up Sunday morning we learned that we had seeded 1st anyway, probably either due to our overall USSSA points, or due to the scores of our first two games. Our first game Sunday was against the Franklin Heat (another team we go back and forth with and just do not like playing). For some reason we just could not get it together. We made error after error on the field, bobbling balls, making bad throws, missing good throws, not to mention we just could not hit the ball. Two of the boys had one really good hit each and that was it. We could not get on base to move runners or steal, etc....we just really fell apart. So....we packed it up and went home early with a score of 1-7.

Last year we also lost the tournament the weekend before we went to St. Louis. Coach Jay said maybe this will help up get our heads on right for next week! Current record.....31-10. I leave on Wednesday and most others leave Thursday and Friday for Orlando. Stay tuned!