Whitby 18U Elite – Silver Medalist Buffalo Cap Classic Tournament

Whitby 18U Elite – Silver Medalist Buffalo Cap Classic Tournament

The 18U Elite Whitby Canadians were excited to attend the 1^st tournament in a few years south of the border, the Buffalo Cap Classic from July 8^th -10^th.

Unfortunately things started out a bit rocky with a 16-4 loss to the Northtown Nationals, a strong local team.

The boys rebounded nicely with a 12-10 victory over “NMC baseball” from Cleveland Ohio, setting up a key 3^rd game against undefeated Crimson Pride from Rochester.

A loss would mean a bump to the consolation round Sunday, whereas a victory meant a spot in the semi-final Championship round.

The team answered the challenge, came together playing one of their best games of the year, both hitting, pitching & defensively, in defeating a very strong team by a 9-6 score.

This set up a Sunday semi-final rematch versus the Northtown Nations, whom were coming in very confident.

Whitby fell behind early 2-0 facing the Northtown ace, but the boys never wavered, and showed Canadian fight & pride, in coming back.

The score was 5 -5 after 4 innings, and then our Whitby boys took over in the last few innings, knocking out the ace pitcher, and rolling to an impressive come from behind 11-7 victory that seemed to leave the confident Northtown team bewildered.

This set up another rematch in the gold medal game versus the Crimson Pride, a great opponent that showed true class and sportsmanship the entire weekend, as both teams bantered and joked back and forth with each other, forming a true mutual respect for each other and the game as well.

Unfortunately we entered the tournament a couple arms short due to injury, and lost the finals game 9-4, but kept heads held very high knowing we represented our town in showing that Canadians can indeed play the great game of baseball also.

You will notice no mention of key moments or individual performances, because in all fairness there was too many to mention with every single member of the this team contributing numerous times over the tournament.

As a coach, all you can ask for is to see improvement, hard word, and the potential in players come out, and that was on full display the entire weekend from everyone.

Our head coach Brian Ballentine whom could not attend for health reasons would have been super proud of this team.

Congrats to the Coaches, Brian Ballentine, Doug Betts, Antonino Riolo….. but especially to the players on a great weekend:

Peyton Wood, Michael McGivney, Darcy D’Souza, Kyle Lloyd, Greg Giles, Lucas Brockstein, Alex Weir, Bryson Betts, Tyson Evenden, Erik Smith, Trevor Porter, Jack Garey, David Young, Peter Ricci, and Tommy Cooper.