It was an atmosphere charged with anticipation during the championship game of the U15 Boys Fastpitch Championships at Rotary Field on Sunday afternoon.
Ontario’s Tara Longhorns would come away with a 10-3 victory, powered by multi-run innings in the 3rd, 4th and 7th innings. Longhorns’ assistant coach Ty McComb says that Tara had a great attitude all week long.
“I’m very proud of our boys for the work they put in this week. We come from behind three, maybe four times this week. They never stopped, never stopped believing in each other and just pulled through in the end and just played good ball. We played good ball today.”
The Longhorns would start things off with a split of their games on Wednesday, with a 9-5 loss to the host Prince Albert Astros before bouncing back with an 8-1 victory over the Ochapowace Loud Voice.
After rain postponed action on Thursday, the Longhorns would have to play three games on Friday, and the Longhorns would run the table winning all three games. They started with a 13-4 win over the Newfoundland Selects, a 6-5 win over the Wilmot Thunder and a 10-9 win over the Valley Vikings.
The three games on Saturday wouldn’t go the way the Longhorns would’ve liked as they lost two out of three games. They would start the day with a split against the Elmire Heat, before falling to the Selects in their final game of the day 10-8.
Coming into Sunday, the Longhorns needed a semi-final win to punch their ticket to the final and they would get just that with an 8-3 win over the Napanee Express.
In the final, it would be Newfoundland Selects who would open the scoring in the bottom of the second inning as Jesse King would drive home Noah Stokes on an RBI single to right.
The Longhorns would respond in the top half of the third inning with a pair of RBI groundouts from Reid Thompson and Jackson Woods.
Tara would extend the lead by scoring three runs in the top of the fourth with the keys plays being an RBI single from Tyson Copeland and Hunter McComb scoring on a wild pitch.
In the seventh, Tara would put the game out of reach with a two run single from Nathan Miller as part of a five run inning.
McComb looks back on an early moment in the tournament as a turning point for the Longhorns.
“We lost the game (when) we were up six (against Elmira) in the bottom of the seventh, (it was) raining and pouring and we ended up losing that game. We battled back. We came through and everybody believed in each other”
