Sports
Greenville District 7 Wins Big League World Series
Southeast topples Latin America after huge sixth inning
The Greenville District 7 team, representing the Southeast, beat Venezuela (Latin America) 6-1 Wednesday night at the J.B. “Red” Owens Recreation Complex in Easley to claim the Big League World Series.
Southeast Coach Jeff Young said the word to describe the feeling after the Championship win was, “Wow!”
“I’ve never coached a team like this before,” Young said of his squad, which consists of some of Greenville County's top high school talent from Mauldin, J.L. Mann, Hillcrest, Greenville, Travelers Rest, Riverside, and Blue Ridge high schools.“Great kids. They played the game extremely well," he said. Last night (against West in the US Semi Final,) in 11 games was the most runs we’ve given up. We persevered through four errors tonight, got behind 1-0 nothing for the first time, but there’s just no quitting in them. It’s absolutely the best team I’ve ever had.”
Latin America took an early lead, scoring the first run of the game in the second, and kept Southeast scoreless until the sixth inning.
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Latin America’s fortunes took a turn for the worse after pitcher Alvaro Lugo and #7 Jonitzo Carruyo collided while diving for the ball. Both players lay stunned on the field for several minutes after the collision, but both kept playing.
Young said Alvaro had been dominant before the collision, despite Southeast “putting some pretty good moves on them.”
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“In the past, some of these Latin America teams, they’re up on you, then they’re down, you can start pressing on them a little bit,” Young said. “They start leaving some pitches out over the middle of the plate. We had some really good at bats, some good passes, some good moves on some baseballs, finally hit it where they weren’t, because we hit some balls really hard in the first three innings – as hard as we’ve hit them all tournament.“
Southeast had a huge inning in the sixth, racking up six runs to take a commanding lead over Venezuela. “I kind of thought if we got a lead off guy on we could do something, especially with Drew Davenport, we could create a little havoc on the bases,” Young said. “I felt if we could get him in motion, get him over to second base, we were going to at least tie the game up.”
He said Venezuela’s pitcher got down in the zone and gave Southeast’s Bradley Jones "a chance to hit.”
“He drove in two runs with a double,” Young said of Jones. “We have very equal phases – offense, defense and pitching staff. We put all three phases together for 11 games in a row.”
Young coached the Championship-winning teams in 2008 and 2011.
He said the third Southeast Championship win he’s coached is even more fun than the first two.
“Especially when you know it’s the last one,” Young said, adding he won’t coach again but plans to remain involved in helping young baseball stars. “It makes it even more special.”
Check out photos from the game and our video of Greenville District 7 celebrating their championship win.
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