Kellyville Gala Day 26/10/08 - Result - Rouse Hill Runners Up - Well done boys.

On Sunday Kellyville ran its annual U9 teeball Gala day. This was the first year in which Rouse Hill attended.

The competition was run in two pools of 4 with teams representing Hills clubs namely Baulkham Hills, Castle Hill, Kellyville and Rouse Hill. There were also teams from the Manly Association (Warringah) & Cronulla (St John Bosco)

To add to the gala day atmosphere, we were fortunate to have two boys (Zac and Hayden) from the Australian U13 Cal Ripken team coach the boys for the day, to gain experience and also to give the current coaches a day off. They were also joined later by James who is in the current Hills U12 State Cup Team, so the boys had a lot of recent teeball experience on offer.

We started our tournament with a close fought victory against a very competitive Kellyville B side. Whilst we were winners of this game, for the most part, we struggled with the early morning start.

Our second game in our pool was against Warringah who were a very strong team across the park. This was a very close game and ended in a 16-all draw.

With our 1 win/1 draw record, we went into the last pool game against Baulkham Hills knowing we were in the finals as Warringah had beaten Kellyville in their final pool game. The boys proceeded to warm to the occasion and handed Baulkham Hills an 18-7 loss which set them up for the semi finals.

We went into the finals as the No 2 ranked team in our group due to a lower for and against so were required to play the No 1 team in the other pool, Kellyville’s A team.

This was the team we had played in our competition twice this year and though we had won both games the last game was extremely close. Whilst the boys were confident going into the game, there were some concerns in the crowd as Kellyville seemed to have developed significantly since Saturday’s game. This was a closely fought game and played with a lot of passion. Luke came up to bat and proceeded to hit a game winning home run to turn the game in the Wildcats favour by 3 runs.

The final was to be played between the two unbeaten teams of the tournament, Rouse Hill and Warringah, who as mentioned played out a hard fought draw in the preliminaries.

The game started as expected with some great hitting and fielding by both teams. Going into the last innings, Rouse Hill had a slender lead of 12-11. Following the last innings there was some confusion as to who had won the game. As it is a timed game, if the innings is not completed then the score reverts to the final completed innings. It was adjudicated by the officials immediately after the game that Rouse Hill were the victors as the innings appeared not to be completed. Sanity prevailed and Warringah were awarded the title as they had overtaken our score by the time the hooter had blown.

Whilst the boys where stripped of the title, they showed great sportsmanship when they were advised of the amended result. For them it was just about playing though getting a medal didn’t hurt no matter what colour it was.

In the end Warringah were worthy winners though the Wildcats matched them in every aspect.

Overall it was a well run competition and Kellyville put a lot of work into making it a great day for the boys. It’s not often you can get to play 5 games in a day and the players will be better players for it.

A big thank you to all the parents/family for committing to this gala day and helping with scoring etc. I know it is not easy to allocate a whole day to events like this, though the support for their boys is reflected in their enthusiasm and commitment. I’m sure like me all the parents walked away happy with the way the boys played and the fun they had.

I would also like to thank Hayden, Zac and James for their tireless efforts throughout the day. They did a wonderful job with the boys and had them playing even better baseball than they had before. They will make excellent coaches in the near future.

Also I would like to thank our two mighty midgets, Adam and Liam for playing in the tournament. For two 6 year olds to step up to 9’s and play they way they did shows what great little players they are going to be.

To the rest of the team , boys you are a credit to the Rouse Hill baseball club and are providing a great platform for younger teams to achieve over the coming years. I hope we can continue to send teams to this event and show them Rouse Hill is a club to watch and also hopefully one day take the trophy home.