Missed us?

Have you missed reading about the exploits of your favorite seven- and eight-year-old state champions? You know you have. Good news: they're back on the field. Keep visiting that blog for updates throughout the fall.

Now it can be told

As you've probably heard by now, one of the three teams slated to be in this weekend's tournament has pulled out. After some investigation, we've discovered why: they got a look at these intimidating photos showing off the muscles of some of WR 7U's brawniest players:

When you look at it that way, it's hard to blame them for not wanting to play. As Coach Sean is fond of saying, "You want a piece of me? Which piece, because you can't handle all of it."

Further information is forthcoming on the schedule for this weekend.

WR 7U Olympics

You have to have this playing in the background to really get the full effect of this post.

Thursday marked the last team practice for West Raleigh 7U. More practices had been scheduled, but when everyone found out Timmy couldn't be there, they decided not to bother. In honor of the last practice, Coach Sean constructed an elaborate Olympic-style competition, plus concocted an evil ruse (more details on that later).

Opening ceremonies featured Coach Sean explaining the rules to the team. "So, does everyone understand how this works?" he asked.

They responded with an emphatic chorus of, "Uhhh..." Oh wait, that was just Coach Adam. The kids fully understood that the first event would be ground balls.

Each player received three grounders, in increasing order of difficulty, and were judged on their ability to field the ball with two hands, come up into a solid throwing position, and make a good throw to Kid Gooch.

Grounders were followed by fly balls. Each player again went three times--the first was directly to them, they had to move a little for the second one, and the third was a wicked liner down the line.

In addition to making the catch, they also had to come up and fire another solid throw. This was good practice for the next event, which was throwing. I'm not saying this was the hardest event, but, well, look at the targets set up by Coach Sean:

The targets (but not Coach Ken) are shown actual size. The goal was to throw the ball into the targets on no more than two hops from about midway in left-center field. "They have to go in the buckets," Coach Sean said as the throwing round began. After one of the three rotations, he added, "I think hitting the bucket is OK." Yeah, you think? The difficulty of hitting the buckets was proven when the coaches attempted to hit them while standing at the fence. Coach Sean air mailed the buckets due to his howitzer arm, while Coach Kevin did nail one. No official records were kept for this portion of the evening.

Players also received five live swings off the pitching machine.Where the ball was hit determined their score. The highest score was given to Coach Bruce for his impressive moves in dodging a line drive.

The next event was running. First, the players were timed going from home to first. Then, they were timed going from second to home. Note here the speed exhibited by Chace, who had taken a wicked bad hop grounder off his kneecap in pre-Olympic warmups but, in true heroic Olympic fashion, came back to post one of the best scores of the day:

With all the events completed, it was time to tally the scores. Coach Sean had devised a scoring system in which the entire 7U roster was divided into two teams, but only he knew who was on which team. It turned out that he had secretly marked the teams on the scoresheet using a code he learned while in Navy SEALS training. The individual scores were added, then combined to make a team score. Then, because one team had six players and the other had seven, the cumulative scores were averaged to get a per-player average for each team. Got all that?

Now, I fully realize no one believes this and thinks the officiating must have been questionable. But as someone who was there when the scores were being tallied, I can vouch for it: the per-player average was a dead tie. This allowed Coach Sean to put his devious plan into motion.

Let's flash back to the beginning of practice. Coach Sean had gathered the team down the left-field line, away from all parents and coaches. After exhaustive interrogation of a person who shall remain nameless, I have learned the following facts: at that gathering, Coach Sean told the players he planned to allow them to peg the coaches with water balloons at the conclusion of practice. HOWEVAH, the coaches were simply told that a water balloon toss would be the tiebreaking event if needed.

Coach Sean carefully lined up the two teams along the third base line. He generously offered to partner up with the odd player, since all 13 players were in attendance, and asked the other coaches to split up and stand near each team's line to "judge if they were cheating."

He explained the rules of the game, and told the players they had to toss the balloons back and forth, and when all of theirs broke, they were out. Then he said, "Go."

Look very carefully at the above picture. Notice that some/most of the players are following the instructions of the game perfectly. But the one big kid, in the yellow shirt, seems to be hunting down coaches with wild abandon. And look who just happens to be the one who picked up the bucket full of water to use as a weapon:

Once the water balloons had been exhausted, some devious pranksters wheeled out the hose, intent on revenge on Coach Sean. However, it turned out the hose had a higher and better use: entertainment for the coaches.

The next team activity is a coaching staff trip to roll Coach Sean's house game on Saturday morning at 10 in Oxford. Game times for the weekend are 10 and 11:30 on Saturday and 11 and 12:30 p.m. on Sunday. Jersey information for each day will be forthcoming after consultation with the proper authorities.

Upcoming schedule

After a long weekend break for Coach Sean to research and buy the new team RV, West Raleigh 7U Blue returned to the practice field this week. The team will play its final tournament this weekend in Oxford and will compete against a pair of 8U teams. Game times are as follows:

Saturday at 10 a.m. against the East Wake Dragons
Saturday at 11:30 a.m. against the Alamance Angels

Sunday at 11 a.m. against the Alamance Angels
Sunday at 12:30 p.m. against the East Wake Dragons

A full link can be found here.

Incredibly, tonight at 5 p.m. marks the team's final practice of the season. In his own personal homage to the Olympics, Coach Sean has planned a series of competitions in different areas of the game. Coach Sean will, of course, serve as master of ceremonies. To aid the media in covering the event, a pre-competition photo of 7U Blue was taken in their Olympic-style jerseys.

Awesome, baby!

The West Raleigh 8U Blue team, which includes brothers, friends and teammates of everyone on the 7U roster, captured the Southeast Regional championship today in Andalusia, Alabama. There is no World Series for 8U, so West Raleigh went as far as they possibly could and earned the title with a decisive win over Sarasota, Florida. Sarasota is a hotbed of Cal Ripken baseball, and their 8U team even includes the grandson of someone very familiar to West Raleigh fans. In the interest of good sportsmanship, we are not at all going to mention that Sarasota needed to get a TO, baby, or that every member of West Raleigh 8U Blue is a PTPer!

7U Blue was lucky enough to play against 8U Blue in the Top Gun All-Star Weekend in Wilmington on June 17. After that game (a 6-2 8U win), Coach Lance told his 8U team that he hoped they would get the same enjoyment out of playing the game that he saw from the 7U team on that day in Wilmington. Safe to say the 8U team got plenty of enjoyment out of beating the very best teams in the entire southeast United States. Congratulations to everyone involved, especially the players, parents and coaching staff. Every time our "little" guys (some littler than others, not that I am naming names) get to play against the "big" guys, it makes them better, and the 8U team has consistently demonstrated the right way to play--both fundamentally on the field and with good sportsmanship on and off the field.

Thought this might be a good time to revisit the "team" photo of the 7U ENC state champs and the 8U Southeast Regional champs:

Time off doesn't pay

I don't know what you are doing on your Friday night without baseball. Maybe cooking on the grill. Maybe hanging out at the beach. Maybe staying up really late, like until 9 p.m. or something.

Well, I hope you're happy with yourself. Because by virtue of not playing in the Oxford tournament this weekend, we missed seeing these uniforms on the field:

Yes, those are actual wear-them-on-the-field uniforms, including the bizarre Zubazesque pants. In case you're wondering, that's the Triangle Tribe. In a related story, Asher has been banned from ever even considering trying out for the Triangle Tribe.

In non-fashion news, congratulations to 8U Red for going 3-0 in pool play in Oxford, and further congratulations on not desecrating the baseball field with a fashion faux pas. 8U Red has now won an impressive 15 games in a row.

Photos from Saturday night

Since everyone is probably in baseball withdrawal, here's a few photos from Saturday night folks were kind enough to send along.

Courtesy of Sandy, a team shot with the trophies:

Courtesy of Megan, a much better shot than the one I had of the team sprinting out to greet Coach Sean after the game:

Courtesy of Megan, a team photo with the trophies:

Courtesy of Sandy, a photo of the team trophy:

And courtesy of Megan, a shot Coach Sean has asked to have blown up to poster size so he can identify the culprits in the cooler dumping incident:

Note how Coach Ken, being familiar with fingerprint ID procedures, makes sure to be right in the center of the action while not actually having his hand on the cooler. Plausible deniability is very important.