AAYBA

For those of you in the baseball world you know what AAYBA is... for those of you who don't, it's a National World Series that's held in Texas, Missouri and Colorado every year.  Just happens to be nice that the town that hosts it in Texas is Flower Mound.  So, for two weeks every year there are baseball teams from everywhere converging on Flower Mound to play ball.  The great thing about this tournament is it's a guaranteed 6-8 games for the week, a LOT of baseball which is great experience for the teams.  Most teams use it as their "end point" for the summer season, the Tigers are no exception to that.

So, to give you an idea how big the tournament is - there were 76 teams in the 10U division....  yep, 76 teams.  They come from all over, from the Valley (of Texas) to Kansas...  LOTS of teams.

How it works is during the 1st two or this year three days of the tournament each team plays 3 games.  Your record during those three games determines your ranking among the teams.  The Tigers went 1-2 in those games and ended up 56 out of 76.  Not bad but not great.

The fourth game determines which of two possible divisions you go to.  The top two divisions are Platinum and Diamond, then Gold and Silver, then Copper and Bronze.  If you lose game 4 you go to the lower division, if you win you go to the upper division.  The Tigers won game 4 so they played in the Gold Division.  From there you work your way up to a North/South Division title.  The Tigers played for the Gold South Division title but lost, so they played for 3rd or 4th place of the Gold Division.

They WON!!!!!!!  The boys played so hard, M pitched and did a GREAT job!!  We are all so proud of how well they played.  If you look at total team rankings they improved their position from 56 to 35 out of 76 teams, quite an improvement.

The Tigers has been such a great experience for M and he has learned so much.  Select baseball can be quite stressful at times but it certainly helps to have a solid team who play well together.   Here is a picture of the team and coaches with their medals:

Oh, and look closely in the background of the 2nd picture - know who that is?  M's old coach...  he was handing out trophies when M's team finished - very special.

Go Tigers!!!!