Memory #2: The greatest Pony League baseball team in the history of Wakarusa
Virgil Weldy, Jr. Insurance. This was the name of my pony league (12-15 years old) baseball team in the Wakarusa Little League. When I was twelve, we were an expansion team. All the other teams in the league had existed the previous season(s), and thus, had returning (and older) players. To make up for the inequity, those who ran the league decided to give our coach a bunch of early picks in the draft of “little leaguers” who were coming into “pony league.”
I think we ended up something like 0-12 that summer. Our coach kept reminding us: “Just wait boys, we’re going to dominate this league in a year or two.”
He was right. The next year we won just over half of our games. The final two seasons we all played together, we never lost a single game, and our first five batters combined for a batting average of over .600. My memory fails me here, but I think at least six of us from that team (it may have been seven) went on to play varsity baseball at Northwood High School.
1 comment:
I had a somewhat similar experience with my high school varsity basketball team. My sophomore year we had a new coach and four of the incoming seniors quit the team in protest of the firing of the previous coach. As a result, I, who was probably destined for either a "prominent" JV role or bench time on the varsity, was promoted along with another sophomore and two freshman to the starting lineup on team. The first year we only were 4-18, the next year we went 8-14, and my senior year we went 16-6. After I graduated the people that started as Freshman led the team to the Final Four, which was the farthest my high school has ever made it in the boys tournament.
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