Even as Cottonwood’s defending champion head coach for the Majors division, Jeff Lynch understands how unrealistic it is to expect any Little League team to go undefeated.
So it was that much more unbelievable to the Verde Valley Little League vice president how his Diamondbacks were able to go 18-0 this spring.
Lynch joins two first-year head coaches — Jose Esquer in the Minors and softball skipper Creighton Kim — competing in Chino Valley with two Camp Verde baseball teams at the District 10 Tournament of Champions, which starts at 4:30 p.m. Friday, June 10, and continues through the end of championship games Sunday, June 12.
Esquer’s team will face off against the Camp Verde Minors representative immediately with a 1:30 p.m. first-round game Saturday, June 11, while head coach John Frisch will need to win two games to meet Lynch’s team at 11 a.m. for the Majors title June 12.
Outside of a one-run squeaker over head coach Preston Buckner’s team May 16, Lynch’s team romped through the rest of its 17 games by a total of 212 runs to 11.
The offensive statistics, starting with averaging more than 10 runs per game for a team batting average of .424, were even more impressive. The highest average on the team belongs to second-year player Oliver Cardnali, a 12-year-old third baseman who hit .633.
“We’ve only been tested once,” Lynch said. “Really, if anything, that’s our weakness.”
After just one postseason appearance in his 13 years as Little League baseball coach, Kim lost a single game taking his daughter’s softball team to the postseason in his first year as a Majors division coach.
“I coached baseball forever, and my daughter’s team makes it,” laughed Kim, who has seven 11-year-olds on his 12-girl roster heading into their 10 a.m. opener June 11 at Chino Valley. “With only three returners, it was a young team, but very coachable.”
Mikell Gordon, a seventh-grader at Clarkdale-Jerome School, developed into Kim’s ace on the mound, throwing to a trio of catchers who “did a very good job,” he added: Riley Peters, Janna Smith and Angelina Moreno.
Esquer led his Diamondbacks to 12 wins in their 14 minor league games, including the clincher, pitched by his son June 1.
“We’re really excited,” he said. “Absolutely a whole team effort. I’ve got 11-year-olds who are my [No.] 3 through 6 hitters, and one of my youngest is leading off.”
Regardless of the results of rescheduled games against other Majors teams Monday and Wednesday, June 6 and 8, Mariners head coach John Frisch is headed back to the postseason with an eight-win team.
“We beat those other teams four times,” said Frisch, who lost a one-run decision May 13 to the Diamondbacks and 11-1 to the Braves on May 23. “We’ve had a lot of mental errors that caused us to lose a couple real tight games like that this year. You can’t win them all, except for Jeff’s team.”
The rain-soaked, 10-run loss came just two days following a 17-1 defeat of the Braves.
While the bats took a little longer to loosen up, the pitching rotation of Cayden Boggess, Easton Bryant, Cory Johnson and Frisch’s son, Cutter, held firm.
For the full Tournament of Champions schedules for Camp Verde and Cottonwood Little League teams, please see the Wednesday, June 8, issues of the Camp Verde Journal and Cottonwood Journal Extra.
