Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Express train to the title

Rec Little League wraps up

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Twenty-three teams of local youth baseball players had a blast around the Fourth of July as the Blaine County Recreation District conducted its year-end tournaments for the 7-8, 9-10 and 11-12 age categories.

Juan Martinez delivers for the Idaho Mountain Express Little League team during last week’s Rec League tournament. Express photo by David N. Seelig

The tournaments started the week of June 28-July 1 with round-robin seeding games that determined the match-ups for the single elimination tournaments July 5-8. All games were played at Nelson Field, Hailey.

Biggest surprise came in the eight-team 11-12 Little League.

Idaho Mountain Express, seeded #8 after three losses in the round robin, streaked all the way to the championship.

The Express squad coached by Jeff Gear and Tyrel Anderson upset #1-seeded Cox Communications 10-9 and beat #4-seeded Atkinsons’ 1-0 in its first two games of the tournament.

On the winning Express team were Gavin Admire, August Danielson, Brendan Freund, Zack Israel, Max Jones, Jordan Levin, Juan Martinez, Fabian Rojas, Tanner Sanders, Scott Smith, Miles Sweek, Miles Vercelli and Hunter Weaver.

Then, in the July 7 championship game, Mountain Express beat #3-seeded Jones Electric 11-5 in five innings.

The third-place winner was #7-seeded Cynthia Unger DDS by an 8-2 score over Atkinsons’.

In the seven-team 9-10 division, #6-seeded Marketron downed #4-seeded Lefty’s by a score of 8-7 in four innings to capture first place. Marketron had beaten #1-seeded Power Engineers and Lefty’s got past #2 Andrews Heating in the semi-finals of the tournament.

Third place went to Power Engineers, a 6-5 winner over Andrews Heating July 8.

In the 7-8 year-old "Coach Pitch" championship contest July 7 at Nelson Field, #3-seeded Flolo’s defeated #5-seeded Cornerstone Realty. In the third-place game, top-seeded Allred Precision Millwork defeated #2 Xpress Cash.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.