Moapa Valley Progress
The Moapa Valley Pirate 14U baseball team (age 14 and under) travelled to Beaver, Utah last weekend for the Beaver Bash Baseball Tournament. It was a tough competition but the local boys came home winning the whole thing, with a tournament record of 5-0.
The 14U team began with a game against South Sevier where Pirate pitchers Gavin Hadley and Austin Heiselbetz combined efforts to put on a one-hitter. The game ended with a 16-1 victory for the Pirates.
That was followed by a 14-5 victory against Kanab, and a 10-2 victory against Kanab City.
Throughout the tournament, the Pirate bats were on fire. The team had more than 10 hits in every game it played. The Pirates were led in hitting by Gavin Hadley with 10 hits (including 1 triple and 2 doubles) and Rylan Evans with 9 hits (including 1 double).
Perhaps the toughest game was next against Parowan. The game came right down to the last at bat. In the final inning, the Pirate’s first batter was Peyton Nielson who started the inning with with a single to center field. Next Kobe Evans put down a perfect sacrifice bunt moving peyton to 2nd base. After one more out was made, Gunner Redd stepped to the plate and delivered a base hit to center field which scored Peyton from 2nd base to win the game. The final score was 5-4.
The tournament championship game put the Pirates against Cedar City. The Pirate pitchers held their opponent to minimal runs. Rylan Evans pitched four innings, Peyton Nielsen pitched 1 inning and Austin Heiselbetz pitched 2 innings to close it out.
During this final game, Gavin Hadley bat 4-4 with three runs scored. Austin Heiselbetz weint 2-3 with 3 runs scored.
The final score brought victory to the Pirates at 8-5.
“I have to give a lot of credit to the MVHS baseball coach, Ed McCann,” said 14U coach Darin Hadley. “I watched a lot of the varsity games this season and we tried to use many of his tactics in this tournament. For example, in the Parowan game, we employed the 1st and 3rd play that Coach McCann used so much this season and it worked perfectly to get us another run.”
Hadley said that the victory was truly a full team effort. “We had contributions from everyone on the team and all of our players should be proud of their performance,” Hadley said. “It was a great tournament!”
