Moapa Valley Progress
The Moapa Valley Pirate 14U baseball team (age 14 and under) travelled to Cedar City, Utah last weekend for a tournament which brought baseball clubs from all over the region. The local team played hard and ended up with a 3-1 record for the tournament.
The team won games against Dixie, Las Vegas and Grantsville. They lost to Spanish Fork.
The Pirates ended up in a tie for the 2nd spot in the championship game. But they fell just short of an opportunity to play in the final game.
“Based on the tiebreaker rules, we missed out on the championship game by just a couple of runs,” coach Darin Hadley explained.
But the Pirate team had another good hitting tournament. They were led by Kashten Frei who had seven hits. Hayden Redd got six hits which included two doubles. Gavin Hadley also had six hits including three doubles.
Pitching was also strong. Gavin Hadley pitched for two of the wins. Rylan Evans got the other one.
There was some tension in the game against the Las Vegas team. The Pirates were down 5-4 going into the bottom of the last inning.
The Pirate’s first batter was Gavin Hadley. He got a hit to deep left field and doubled.
Gannon Hymas was up next and ended up walking.
Then Kashten Frei came to the plate hitting a single and scoring Hadley to tie the game.
Next up, Hayden Redd got hit by the pitch and walked to first to load the bases.
After one out was made, Slade Graham came to the plate. Graham hit the 2-2 pitch deep to right center field for a walk-off triple that scored all three base runners and won the game for the Pirates.
Coach Hadley said that, all in all, it was a great tournament for this group of young players.
“I’ve coached most of these kids since they were 10-11 years old and it has been so much fun to see their improvement over the years,” Hadley said.
Hadley recalled a few years past when the team struggled to just win a game or two at these same regional tournaments. But over the past year, the team has been in contention for the championship for nearly every tournament it has played, he said.
“I’m not sure who has had more fun over all of these tournaments, me or the kids!” Hadley said.
