Sunday, July 20, 2008

9AA World Series!


USSSA WORLD SERIES 3RD PLACE

TEAM EXTREME KINGS 9AA


Coach Chris



The family



picked off...and ticked off!



the Ryan boys



after scoring during a rally...


a comeback celebration...



rally cap!





the go ahead run comes across the plate!






And it's Casey celebrating the victory!


the team prays before a game...





in the dugout staying cool...


SAFE!!

Dogpile!





he tells me this one was a ball, oh well, it looked cool to me!


Ironically, the last out of our final game was Casey...the agony of defeat (and one tired boy after nine games in the hot sun!)

Casey's baseball team is made up of some boys who played together as long ago as last spring in little league and all stars, as well as a few who started in with us at the beginning of the fall kid pitch season, and one or two who came aboard just early this spring season when we began as the Kings. They were fortunate enough to not get moved into the AAA class before world series, and were able to compete in the AA bracket that was well suited for this team this year! They did an amazing job during pool play and secured the #1 seed for the bracket/double elimination tourney. Our first game ended up being against a team that hit the ball well and was not an easy victory. We lost our second game to team that should not have beat us, but came from behind to beat us in the last inning. Something happened in the hearts of those boys after that loss. They became determined to never give up. At this point, it was win or go home. Our very next game was immediately afterwards and they had to fight from behind with time expired and score 5 runs to win the game. The next day they played three games to continue to the final day of the tournament and play in the semi-final. Two of those games were time expired, last at bat, come from behind battles. We called them the Cardiac Kings because we were all just dying that they could not just get a comfortable lead. In one of the games, the other team scored 9 runs in a 30 minute first inning and they still fought back to win it in the end! So needless to say, even when it our journey ended up at third place, we couldn't have been prouder of all that team accomplished. They had trophies for third place too, and third out of eighteen is not too shabby!

4 comments:

Amy said...

Looks like fun! Your family is so cute! Boys are the best.

Anonymous said...

oh, steph! you know i am living vircariously through you and all of your boy moments! brad loves and adores his girls, but oh, what he would do for a baseball boy who could use his daddy's glove...left handed of course!
looks like an absolutely perfect family vacation for the ryans!
let us know if you ever make it up to austin for a game, we would love to go!

Kathryn said...

I know you are so proud of those boys! Congratulations on a great season. I felt as if I was there with you as I was looking at the great pictures and reading the play by play of the world series. Yay Casey and Cody!

Mom said...

These are great photos, your boys are going to love looking back at this stuff when they are older! What an awesome mom you are!