It was a night that capped a summer to remember for Camp Verde’s Junior Little League All-Stars.
Known simply as the Diamondbacks before capturing the District 10 championship in five innings July 11 over Chino Valley, Head Coach Todd Grandy’s team took away pride, not disappointment, from its season-ending 17-6 loss Sunday, July 20, to top-seeded Tucson Frontier in Kingman at the Arizona Junior Little League State Tournament.
“Afterwards, their coach came up and said that nobody else had given them that much of a fight,” Grandy said. “That team was an incredible team: I have very little doubts they will end up winning this tournament, and we scored more runs against them than any other team.”
At ninth place with a 1-3 record through four games that began July 16, Camp Verde would just miss the cut for the eight-team, single-elimination tournament to decide the state’s top 13- and 14-year-old little league club.
Shortstop Rafael Zapata did his best to prevent that with two home runs, including a three-run shot 305 feet over the left-center field fence of Kingman’s Southside Park on Thursday, July 17, in the fifth inning of a 13-3 run-ruling of Mesa — what Grandy and son Ben, an incoming freshman pitcher at Camp Verde High School, believe is the first state tournament win in the history of Camp Verde Little League.
For the full story, please see the Wednesday, July 23, issue of the Camp Verde Journal.
