Mike Vukovcan NEW BRIGHTON– When playing at the Coaches Pitch level of Youth Baseball, while it’s fun, winning and losing isn’t something to get worked up about.
These kids are 7-and 8-year-olds and right now it’s all about player development and truly learning the game of baseball. If winning becomes a byproduct of this, then that’s just icing on the cake.
Tonight, Coach Daley’s Hopewell Coach Pitch team returned to action tonight as they traveled to New Brighton.
I’ve been watching Coach Pitch baseball in Hopewell for close to 10 years and tonight’s game between Hopewell and New Brighton was one of the best fundamentally played games that I’ve witnessed.
New Brighton came away with 3-2 win but that doesn’t take away from the performance of Coach Daley’s team. It’s not often that in Coaches Pitch that you can say defense dominated but that was the case in this game as this contest was over with in just 57 minutes. Both teams were swinging, both teams were making contact and more importantly, both teams were making great plays in the field.
HOPEWELL’S SOLID DEFENSE TONIGHT:
*Bottom of the 1st inning: Hudson Lavia fields a ball at shortstop and gets to the bag for a force out at 2nd. Then with 2 runners on and 2 out, Harper Lavia fielded a sharp grounder to first and ran to the bag to end the inning.
*Bottom of the 2nd inning: With 2 out, 6-year-old Brady Daley easily took in a sharp ground ball to 2nd base and fired it to Harper Lavia at First.
*Bottom of the 3rd inning: In this inning, Hopewell made 3 plays in the field. First out came from a fielder’s choice force out at 2nd by Daley, Hudson Lavia then took in a grounder at 1st base and then Daley was aware of the situation and registered another force out at 2nd base.
*Bottom of the 4th inning: A big-time play was made by Hudson Lavia as he fielded a ground ball at shortstop in medium depth and then fired it across the infield to Will Vukovcan at 1st base, who held on.
*Bottom of the 5th inning: Brody Lopez, was playing pitcher, and ran up to get a softly hit ball and threw to Harper Lavia at 1st base, who held on. Then, Daley made yet another play in the field as he smoothly fielded a grounder at second and threw across to Harper Lavia.
Hopewell’s Brady Daley and Hudson Lavia
Tremendous job by Hopewell tonight, even by the players in the outfield, who got the ball in quickly to the infielders so the runners couldn’t advance another base.
VIKINGS OFFENSE:
*Hopewell’s batters recorded 6 hits tonight: Harper Lavia (1), Hudson Lavia (1), Will Vukovcan (1), Brody Lopez (1), Cameron Baker (1) and Grayson Oblinger (1).
*The encouraging thing was the solid contact that Hopewell’s batters were making all evening long. Despite registering only 6 hits, that doesn’t tell the story of how the Hopewell hitters performed at the plate. Their biggest problem was the tremendous defense that the New Brighton played particularly in the infield fielding both grounders and the pop fly’s that Hopewell hit. Give credit to New Brighton for doing their jobs on defense.
*One other statistic to point out- Hopewell batters got 24 plate appearances and only struck out 5 times. Compare to the season opening game against Ambridge when they struck out 12 times.
That’s called improving and developing, which is what the Coach Pitch League is all about.
NEXT UP:
*Hopewell’s Coach Daley’s team will return to action on Wednesday when they travel to Rochester.
