Tallassee’s 10U recreational league all-stars came home with USSSA World Series championship rings last week. They showed them off to the entire community, plus friends and family at a celebration ceremony last Monday night at the Tallassee Recreation Center.
The boys, sitting in the bed of a pick-up truck, were ushered in by Tallassee police cruisers to the cheers of the community and the blaring of “We Are the Champions” and “Eye of the Tiger” via the speaker system.
“(It) was definitely cool,”Tallassee youth baseball commissioner Coy Thomas said. “First of all, I think the community support for these things prior to going in and as they come home, having the welcome home parade, makes it exciting for the boys. No doubt that the Tallassee community and the city as a whole rallies behind their youth.”
The team is made up of the 12 best 9- and 10-year-olds in Tallassee youth baseball league. Yet going in, coach Jon Rodgers had no idea what they would be able to accomplish — let alone that they would bring home the World Series championship.
“They figured out what their potential was and hit their peak at the right time at the state tournament,” Rodgers said. “After that we had another week of practice getting ready for the World Series (in Baton Rouge). And then they just continued to fight and grind and get better.”
Things started to really come together for the 10U all-stars and their coaching staff made up of Rodgers and his assistants, Ben Elliott, Brandon Rigsby, Mike Mann and Dylan Hughes.
In the first pool play game at state, Tallassee jumped out in the first few innings, gaining a substantial lead against Madison.
“They got some momentum and then they came back and beat us,” Rodgers said. “It was a pretty substantial lead. That’s when we really started to preach, we had to learn how to finish baseball games. We had them down and we couldn’t keep them there.”
After that loss, Tallassee went undefeated for the rest of the tournament and clinched a World Series berth with all their entry fees paid. The coaches went to the parents and together they decided to try to raise money to send the team off to Louisiana.
“There were a lot of generous people in the town and cities around Tallassee that helped us to get there,” Rodgers said. “It helped pay for a lot of expenses for the players and parents while we were down there. And we really appreciate everybody that was involved in raising the money.”
At the World Series, the boys looked good in pool play and moved onto the double-elimination bracket. They won their first game handily, but cracks began to show in the second bracket game against Northport.
“I don’t know if we got complacent in the fact that we were handling business, but we saw a drop off in that game,” said Rodgers. “The bats, they went cold. Defensively, we made six errors in that baseball game and Northport scored six runs off those errors.”
That game put the 10U all-stars in the losers bracket, forcing them to win two more games consecutively just to get back into the championship game where they would face Northport. “We had to win four games back to back in the heat,” said Rodgers. “There were 10-, 15-minute breaks between games. We played a game, stayed in the dugout, 10 or 15 minutes for them to warm up and we’re going.”
The all-stars handled their remaining bracket play games against Crossett and Tuscaloosa, and before they knew it they were back in the championship going up against the team that had just beaten them.
“Something happened in that Tuscaloosa game, the bats just caught fire,” Rodgers said. “The kids got fired up and it just seemed like when they realized they were getting a chance at redemption against Northport, it just set them on fire. And the rest is history.”
The boys beat Northport in both games, the first one 14-4 and the second 11-0. In the World Series, the 10U all-stars had 84 hits with a team batting average of .416. They scored 112 runs and stole 153 bases for a final record of 8-2.
The team included Cam Hill, Christian Waver, Cole Hughes, Easton Rodgers, Everett Elliott, Jett Golden, Mason Taylor, Sebastian Alvarez, Tillman Scarborough, Tripp Lynn, Tucker Sanders and Zeke Rigsby.