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Gators WIN 2003 11U AAU National Championship in Orlando FL
The Greenville Gators traveled to Orlando's Wide World of Sports Thursday July 17 to prepare to compete against 60 of the top teams in the country. From Saturday to the following Friday we battled daily to stay alive. All 11 Gator players stepped it up to win 9 games in a row to take them to the final championship game against the San Diego Stars from San Diego Ca. Each team was undefeated, and knew one team had to loose. What transpired during that game, I don't think the Stars were ready for.
All winter and spring the Gators worked and worked hard for this day. All the players had it in their heart, even when the team wasn't practicing, they were somewhere on their own working on their fundamentals. The majority of the players were still working weekly with individual instructors from the Strike Zone in Greer SC to help them keep fine tune their skills in preparation for this day. The Gators have always tried to play against the toughest competition they could find. We traveled regionally to play some of the best 11u teams in the country, we even played 6 tournaments against 12 year olds and even played in a 12 year old league made up of some of the best 12 year old teams in the southeast. We won a few and lost a few, but what we gained was knowledge, experience and confidence. There wasn't one tournament we went to that we didn't learn something and that something was always added at practice the following week.
What the Stars didn't know was that we were ready for what ever they could throw at us. We batted first and scored right away. We hit the ball great and with defence and pitching at it's best we secured the victory 8 to 3. We pretty much caught the Stars by surprise. They had no idea we could hit that well all the way through the line up. That victory gave the Gators a perfect 10 & 0 record and the AAU National Championship. The Gators had scored 64 runs while only giving up 20 for the week.
My hats off to all the players, parents and sponsors, together with a true team effort it all became possible. It was a lot of hard work and it seemed forever getting here, but now we can set back and look at it and I'm sure we'll all agree it was well worth it.
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