Baseball is the hobby of my life! I could play it forever, and I won’t quit until my legs give out on me and I have to drag myself home. I have had so many great experiences in my life, but the best one was last year when I got to go to play a tournament in Cooperstown, NY.

We went up to Cooperstown around June 28th and were going to stay there until July 4th. It is the most beautiful place I had ever been, and right away I knew I was going to love the week we were going to have there. Our first game was the next day, and we were going to play two games that day. We split them, one win and one loss. We ended up going 4-2 in pool play and then came the tournament. We were going into this tournament as the 36th ranked team out of 98 total teams.

We won our first three games by a good margin, and we were able to make it to the sweet sixteen. Then we played the number 2 team. It was the closest game I’ve ever played in! We won the game when I stole home to give us the lead. Then our pitcher shut them out in the last inning. We won our next game against the number 9 team and went to the final four! Our team took a four to nothing lead against the number 3 team in the tournament. In the last inning we had a five run lead, and then we brought in our fourth grade pitcher with two outs thinking we had it won. But then they scored six runs to beat us 15-14.

Heartbroken we all walked back to our bunk house just thinking about how close we were to the championship game in a nationwide tournament. It was like trying to hang on to a very wet bar of soap. We had the game at the start, but at the end we let it fall out of our grasp. This might sound very sad from our point of view, but really it was the greatest experience of my life and I will never forget it.