All the little details



We had a fairly good season of baseball. Here are some of the many things we did and accomplished this year. After March Madness, the regular season started. We played one night each week along with a double header on Saturday. April had the Pizza Factory tournament. It was bitter cold, and since the boys hadn't really gotten to play together as a full team yet, so were the boys. We went 3-1, but still went to the playoffs. Those darned Dingers beat us in the semi's, so no championship this time. The first of May we went to the Triple Crown State tournament. Again we came up short in the semi's. Next up was the Memorial Day tournament. As the case has been all season, the weather got the better of us being able to finish this one on time. We did finish it up in mid June with a Championship. Beating the Dirt Dogs 7-6, the Bangers 15-0 and finally (they aren't going to beat us this time) we beat the Dingers 10-7 for the big win. The first weekend of June we headed once again to Denver for a tournament. The only thing fun or good about Denver was the Rockies game, the parade of teams, and sitting in seats we weren't supposed to be in. The weekend before Cooperstown, we had a family fun get away to Yuba lake. The boys tubed, water skied, jet skied, swam and fished. We all camped out over night and ate s'mores. In mid July (after Cooperstown) we hosted and won our first Marshalls tournament. The last tournament for the year was the tournament of Champions. This is invitation only, by winning a tournament throughout the season. We finished the season on a not so great note. We didn't even make it to championship day, which has never happened before. I think the long season and Cooperstown had finally caught up with the boys, and they just had nothing more to give. For the season, we played 67 games, going 49-18. That is a winning % of 73%. Not too bad when all is said and done. Thank You to the Marshall Gates foundation for helping to make this a successful season. See you all next year!

Cooperstown or Bust!!

July started off with a bang.. We all gathered our gear and set off for New York.
Our first day there, we got on the subway and headed down to the Statue of Liberty. From there we visited ground zero, saw the Empire State Building, ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in Time Square, and then headed up to Yankee Stadium for the Yankees-Red Sox game.


The next day it was off to Cooperstown. Many hours, a long detour at Wal-Mart, and not so great GPS directions later we arrived Friday night. Now the coaches and boys were on their own in the barracks of Dreams Park.
Saturday, the official fun began. All the skills competitions and opening ceremony were held.



On Sunday it was down to the business of baseball. We beat the Carolina Riptide 8-6, but lost to the Arkansas Reds 18-1. Monday we started the day by going to the Hall of Fame museum followed by beating the Cambridge Cubs 13-1, and the Grassland Grizzlies 9-4. Tuesday we beat the Boys of Baseball 11-3, and the New Richmond Stingers 9-6. That night we had a fun dinner outing at the Ladies house. Wednesday we beat the Roselle Renegades 12-2. Now it was time for the tournament brackets to be played. We ranked #22 out of 98 teams going in. We first faced the #43 seed Norwin Knights. They gave us all we could handle, but we came away with the win 5-4. Next up was the #11 seed, Express Baseball. It was a tight game the whole way, a defensive duel. Somehow we just did all the little things right and advanced to the sweet 16 with a 4-3 win. It was the teams goal to play on Championship day, and now it was going to happen. Thursday morning we had to play the #6 seed, Bulldogs Baseball. We kept it close, and were even tied 4-4 in the 4th, but they had just a little more fire power than we did and beat us 10-5. Our team had a record of 8-2 and tied for 9th place for the whole tournament.
All the boys and the coaches had a great time playing cards at night, trading pins with the other teams, pillow baseball and who could forget the "white tornadoes" every day.

2008...The new Utah Marshalls

So lets start out first with the major change for our team...a name change. We are now the Utah Marshalls. We are sponsored by a local charitable foundation named in memory of young man named Marshall who died of a heart problem. The foundation was started to promote youth baseball and to keep his memory alive for his favorite sport. We are lucky to have a great organization to help our team attain many goals.
Now on to baseball. We lost one player at the end of last season, but have added a very good player to take his place. We started the season by going down to the annual March Madness tournament in St. George. Due to the fact that Easter was also this same weekend, we had 3 boys missing to play in a basketball tournament in Vegas. Lucky for us, our coaches found some "adequate" replacements. We picked up 1 local boy and 2-3 other boys that made the trip up from Vegas. Although all our regular boys played a great tournament, it was a great help to have these extra boys join our team. We made it through pool play with a 3-1 record, great pitching and defense and lots of homeruns. Although we had that loss, we were already guaranteed a spot in the playoffs, and went in as an 8 seed. Our hitting and pitching really paid off through the playoffs and led us to our first championship of the season, beating the Idaho Diamondbacks 11-1. Congrats boys on a job well done and thank you to those boys who filled our team.