All-stars face tough tournament
File Photo Brett Jensen runs to get the ball during a Clark Fork Valley All-stars game earlier this season. The All-stars competed at the Cal Ripken Regional Baseball Tournament this past weekend. While they didn’t win the tournament the team valued the learning experience that if offered.
Jamie Doran
Valley Press
The Clark Fork Valley All-star Minors had a tough but fun time this past weekend at the Cal Ripken Regional Youth Baseball Tournament in Meridian, Idaho.
“We didn’t advance to Saturday, but that shouldn’t speak to our performance,” Coach Todd Johannsen said. “We played well, but the competition was really stiff.”
Their first game was Thursday at 8 a.m. against Wilamette Valley, a team out of Oregon. Willamette Valley defeated the All-stars 10-0. At 1 p.m. on Thursday the All-stars played the host team Meridian, which they also lost, although Johannsen couldn’t remember the exact score off-hand. “All I can tell you is that we lost pretty substantially,” he said.
On Friday the All-stars also had two games to continue on with their pool-play. At 1 p.m. on Friday they played Eastmont, a team from Washington and then at 6 p.m. they played West Linn, also from Oregon. Johannsen said that the final game the All-stars played against West Linn on Friday was their closest game, and they were defeated 7-4.
Johannsen said that most of the teams at the tournament played around 65 games together and they had hundreds of players to pull from. “Those All-star teams have over 35 to 40 teams they had to pick from,” Johannsen said. “They pick their All-star teams early in the year and play in tournaments all season, which gives them quite an advantage.”
Johannsen said that the team got beat up a little, but that they did really well and it was a great learning experience for them.
“They all saw what the next level of baseball is like when you get up there,” he said. “It was like going to a professional baseball tournament.”
Johannsen said that the teams had a lot of funds backing them and to pool from and even the parents were acting like they were watching a professional game. “The mothers from other teams had matching shirts, and you could just tell that those teams have a lot of money behind them,” he said.
Johannsen said that his team did well, especially considering that he believes they were in the tougher of the two pools. “The other pool had two teams from Idaho who didn’t win their state tournaments and were just invited into this one, and in our pool we didn’t have any invited tournaments, which made it harder.”
Even though the loss was disappointing, Johannsen said that he’s happy the team had a really good time and also happy that they got the experience of attending a tournament at that level. Plus he’s excited for the future.
“We’re going to have a really good team next year,” Johannsen said. “We’ve got a real good shot about getting somewhere.”
Johannsen said that the team also wants to thank all of their supporters and sponsors. “We really owe a lot to them and want to thank them for all of the support and for helping us even get out to Idaho to compete.”