The Mile High 10U All Stars saw 3 different teams they hadn’t seen all summer this past weekend at the State Tournament in Butte Montana. The boys played 3 games in total, Big Sky, Burlington Central, and Boulder Arrowhead.
Friday night the boys put on a great performance as they smacked the leather off the baseball for 4 straight innings behind the arm of Kale “does it all” Alexander, to go on and beat Big Sky 10-0 to advance to the Semis against Boulder Arrowhead.
In what was a close battle most of the way, just some minor hiccups that were hard to recover from and Boulder edged out Mile High moving the Butte boys to the loser out semifinal against Burlington Central on Sunday morning.
Butte held a 2-1 advantage after the first 2 innings of play before Burlington hit a blast to right center field scoring 3 runs to make it 4-2 BC. In what was a stellar defensive performance they went back and forth all morning, Benny “the Jet” Donaldson made and incredible catch at short stop to keep runners from advancing, while Copper “the Slugger” Coffing ran down a ball at 2 bag for another great catch and out for Butte to keep it with in just 2 runs. Cole “the Closer” O’Connor pitched an incredible game and used all 75 pitches to try and help his team get back to Boulder Arrowhead for the State Championship. Colt “The Wall” Horsley came in to finish up and did and incredible job for the situation he was in.
Mason “The Cat” Lowney caught an incredible game and let nothing past him allowing his team to chip away at the lead and crawl back into it. Brysen “Fuzz” Fosness found his stroke this weekend and laid wood each time he was at the dish.
After a Kale Alexander base on balls, Benny Donaldson hit a rope to left field scoring Alexander to bring it to 6-5 Burlington, Donaldson would advance to 3rd base where Ridge “the Iceman” Bauer hit a dribbler to the pitcher who couldn’t handle the ball scoring Donaldson for the tie and the bases loaded jam for Burlington, but great pitching got them out of a tough inning and into their final home half of the inning.
The first batter of the inning was hit by a pitch and would advance to first base, the next was a line drive to center advancing the runner with the winning run-on 3rd base. The next at bat was a line shot to Coffing a 2nd base but on the transfer the ball fell out of the mitt resulting in the umpire ruling a no catch and the runner from 3rd scored to go on and win it 7-6 in heartbreaking fashion for Butte.
Burlington would go on to face Boulder Arrowhead for the State Championship and Arrowhead came out on top in convincing fashion to become 8-10U Montana State Champions.
These boys got better all summer, every practice, and every tournament they improved, thanks to great Coaching from “Spicey” Mike Alexander and the boys Jordan “the Hype Man” Clary and Connor “the Zenmaster” Lowney. Also, a big shout to all the parents and others who helped along the way, the boys couldn’t have done the mornings practices without coach Larry, Coach Butch, Coach Dan, and Coach Kelly and Coach Joe. Thank you all for a great summer of baseball!
