- April 19, 2024
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The Ormond Beach 10U All-Stars topped Palm Coast, 15-2, to claim the District 13 championship.
BY ANDREW O'BRIEN | SPORTS EDITOR
In baseball, pitching wins championships. Even if the players are 10 years old — or younger.
The Ormond Beach Babe Ruth All-Starts 10U team captured the District 13 championship last week, topping Flagler PAL, 15-2, in the double-elimination tournament, held in South Daytona. The tournament featured teams from Ormond, Flagler County, Palatka, Port Orange, Sanford, South Daytona and Southeast Volusia.
Ormond Beach went 4-0 in tournament play and now advances to the state championship tournament, which will be held July 11-14, in Sarasota. The team is two titles away from advancing to the Babe Ruth/Cal Ripken World Series. There will be 10 teams at the state tournament.
This is the first time that an Ormond Beach baseball team has advanced to the 10U state championships.
Many of the players on the team have been playing together over the past year on various recreational and travel-ball teams.
“We’re deep on the mound, and we have a lot of pitching,” said coach Tommy Johnson, noting that nine of his 13 players are capable of pitching in games. “We play solid defense, and we play together.”
The team isn’t necessarily known for its power, either. Instead, the players have bought into playing small ball and being successful with timely hitting.
“Pitching and defense is what we hang our hat on,” Johnson said.
In fact, in the District 13 tournament, Johnson used seven different pitchers.
Ormond Beach practices three days a week and will continue to do so until the state championships. And Johnson said he hopes his team will do more of the same come the state tournament.
“We just stick to the fundamentals and go back to what got us there,” he said. “A lot of batting practice, ground balls and pitching drills. We go back to the fundamentals and work a lot on footwork on the baseball field, and we try to do things the right way fundamentally.”
Johnson also said his group of all-stars really is a group, not a bunch of individual players.
“The team finds a way to win, and they play as a team,” he said. “It’s never one person who gets it done. They are a hardworking group, and everything starts with effort and attitude.”
