The Southwest Colorado Youth Baseball Minors and Majors’ seasons have come to an end.
After winning District 4 championships two weeks ago, both the Minors and Majors fell in their respective state tournaments on Sunday.
The 8-10 year-old Minors hosted the Colorado Minors State Tournament at South Rotary Field in Cortez, which kicked off last Friday with a barbeque that saw over 200 in attendance.
Minors head coach Josiah Forkner said the barbeque was everything that Little League baseball should be about, with players from all four different teams playing whiffleball together and families interacting and enjoying the park. He also wanted to thank the City of Cortez for their excellent work keeping the park and baseball field clean.
Unfortunately, once the tournament started the Minors faced a fate that Forkner said was eerily similar to the one met by last year’s squad, falling to North Boulder and Academy in the same sequence as the prior state tournament.
First, the Minors dropped their opener to North Boulder on Saturday, 15-9. They were within two runs in the fifth inning, but three errors allowed North Boulder to pull away.
After jokingly stating his bias, Forkner pointed to his son Lincoln’s pitching as a highlight, saying that he pitched four innings and struck out a handful of batters to keep the Minors close. Forkner also noted the team’s offense as a whole, saying that scoring nine runs was awesome, but that errors were their downfall.
On Sunday, the Minors were eliminated by Academy, 13-3 to end their season. But Forkner said that the team still has much to be proud of.
“We were very young,” said Forkner. “We had mostly nine year olds on a 9-10 tournament team, which is a huge disadvantage, but even more reason to be proud that they got in there and competed even though they were significantly younger and playing teams from significantly larger populations.”
“Overall for Cortez Little League,” he continued. “We’re just so proud that we won the district at three different levels and the Micros team took second place in the Durango tournament. Cortez baseball is really on the rise and doing well, and we’re super proud of our kids.”
The Majors also wrapped up their season on Sunday in the Colorado Majors State Tournament in South Denver.
Dorrian Hilliard got the Majors off to a good start in their opener against Academy with a solo home run to put the team up 1-0 early, but head coach Evan Frost said that the team was unable to get going offensively like it had during the district tournament.
Hilliard mashed another home run later in the contest, but the Majors fell, 6-4.
Frost said the team had the same troubles at the plate in their second contest. The Majors failed to score against Grand Mesa, ending their season with a 5-0 loss.
“Our defense was there,” Frost explained. “But our offense was not there at all. If we would’ve had half the offense that we did in our district games we would have had two wins in state play. But the kids came out and gave their all and that’s all we can ask for.”
“All in all, our kids came out and they did their best,” Frost continued. “I think we had three our four 12 year olds on the team and only one of them had been to a state tournament. And the rest of the team was kids that turned 11 years old through the season, so it was a young team.”
