SUNRAYSIA’S under 12 Little League side has created history by winning the Baseball Victoria Country Division of the Little League World Series qualifying tournament played in Melbourne last week.
By defeating Latrobe Valley in the final, Sunraysia now goes on to the Australian Championships to be played in the Gold Coast in late May or early June.
Sunraysia, along with City Division winner Southern Mariners, will represent Victoria against two sides from all other states and territories in a four-day tournament.
It is uncharted territory for Sunraysia baseball, as this is the first time the under 12 side has been invited into the Little League World Series qualifiers, and their victory last week will propel the players into the tournament that will feature the best 11 and 12-year-olds in the country.
Coach Troy Kortekaas was thrilled with the result.
“It was a fantastic three days of competition and the players did very well. We had been training for over a month and to come away with the prize was a tribute to the players who have been working hard,” he said.
“However, the next level of hard work starts now as we realise we will be up against the best players. But for our kids to be exposed to this type of competition, it can only strengthen their play and that of Sunraysia baseball in general.”
Sunraysia played a gruelling six games over three days – three against Latrobe Valley and one each against the city sides Yarra Rangers, Western Mets and Bellarine Rays.
With the Little League rules being very specific (every player must play in every game and pitchers are limited in the number of pitches that they can throw) the coaching team of Troy Kortekaas, Nick Carroll and Bob Farr continually shuffled all their players in order to meet these requirements.
A feature of the lead-up matches was a first-up win against city combination Western Mets.
The Mets defeated one of the city finalists but were no match for a fired-up Sunraysia as they lost by 12 runs.
Another highlight was every Sunraysia player taking their turn at having a pitch.
With some players not used to pitching, it was a credit to all that they stepped up and had a go.
The effort put in by everyone was emphasised by Rick Langanke, who hustled the moment he set foot on the diamond and was an example to his teammates.
With the bat Mason Clavell, Morgan Ruchel, Sarah Schurr and Levi Jackson led the way with safe hits, but every player batted patiently to draw numerous walks from their opposition pitchers.
The grand final against Latrobe Valley was a tight affair to start, both sides scoring two runs in the first innings, but it was broken open in the second dig when Sunraysia piled on five runs.
The combinations of Will Kortekaas and Mason Clavell (pitching) and Tyron Boromeo and Brayden Douglas (catching) were doing an excellent job of restricting Latrobe from scoring and the Sunraysia bats then took the game away from Latrobe. Sunraysia out hit Latrobe seven to five and the final 11-5 scoreline was a fair indication of Sunraysia’s dominance of the match.
Morgan Ruchel and Mason Clavell had two hits each with Cal Klassen, Levi Jackson and Will Kortekaas picking up one each.
Significantly, all 13 Sunraysia players got on base as they continued to keep the pressure on the opposition.
With training starting in earnest, the players know that victory in the Gold Coast will see them go on to Hong Kong as the Australian representative.
This article appeared in Friday's Sunraysia Daily 3-2-2012.
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