As regular season play comes to an end in summer baseball and softball leagues, the task of putting together an all-star team to represent a specific area in district, regional and world-series play can be a difficult task.
The coaches in a given league get together and each coach nominates their best players in the hope they are eventually selected as an all star.
It certainly appears the coaches of the Wilmington 14-and-under Little League All Stars not only got the right mix of talent, they have created the right atmosphere that is conducive to success, and this team’s success over the last two weeks will now carry them to Florida.
“For years here we had recreation ball played at Supper Optimist, Winter Park Optimist, and Halo Sports and we worked together to create a competitive and fun arena for the younger girls to improve their skills,” Wilmington Coach Brandon Arthurs said. “A few years ago Shawn Rivenbark and I got together in an effort to make the experience better for our daughters and everyone.
“When it came to a team representing our area it was usually the team that won the post-season tournament, but we started to see, when we left the area, we didn’t do well. It was pretty much one team going up against teams made up of players from three or four teams, so this year we decided to combine the three (Supper Optimist, Winter Park Optimist, and Halo Sports) and so far we are doing very well.”
A couple of weeks ago the Wilmington team headed to Fayetteville to face two clubs from that area in the district tournament. Wilmington won the first game 15-0 and the second game 15-2, and the two district victories sent the team to Ahoskie last weekend for the Junior League North Carolina State championship tournament.
Wilmington cruised in the three games played, winning the three contests by scores of 22-1, 13-2, and 19-0. That’s a composite run differential of 84-5 in five games, none of the games lasting more than the mercy-rule dictated five innings.
“We’re not trying to pour runs on teams,” Arthurs said. “We’re doing things like stepping off the bases early to create outs, but there’s not much you can do to stop the momentum early in the game when the girls are playing the game the way it should be played.
“Our starters have played about two innings in each of the five games so far. It’s just that this team is very good and the girls on the bench and the starters are pretty much interchangeable so there is no significant drop-off in talent.”
Arthurs said the team’s 13-player roster is made up of mostly rising eighth- and ninth-graders. There are two girls who will attend Ashley, two who will attend Hoggard and nine who will attend Laney.
Next week the group will be heading to Fort Myers, Florida, where they will participate in the Southeast Regional Championships series (July 25-31) with the winner advancing to the Little League Junior World Series.
The teams there will be representing Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
“I’m really excited about going to Fort Myers and my family is excited to go, too,” said Cameron Rivenbark, a rising eighth-grader at Roland Grise Middle School. “But we realize that all the way along the teams are going to get better so it’s both kind of exciting and kind of scary, but I’d rather play really, really good teams and get better. All the girls are really excited.”
Arthurs and the other coaches are constantly reminding the girls that it will be tougher but he believes if they stay the course they will be successful.
“We are just telling them to continue to work hard and do what they’ve been doing,” Arthurs said. “They have been doing a really good job at not playing up or down to their competition rather they are staying on a pretty even keel.
“We continually tell them to focus only on the next play and the next pitch. They are very smart girls who know what they have to do to be successful, and the good thing is they have been playing (recreation) ball together for years so they pretty know what to expect from each other and there is no finger-pointing or criticism when someone does something wrong. It’s all about supporting their teammates.”
Grayson Arthurs, a rising sophomore at Laney, said she thinks that the camaraderie enjoyed by the girls is a big contributing factor to their success.
“We get along well together. It’s not one person and we don’t have one girl holding the team together,” Grayson said. “It’s a total team effort. The talent level is really, really high and we’ve only committed two or three errors in the games we’ve played so far. We have good pitching (Page Cruse and Sailor Funai handle most of the pitching duties), we play good defense, and we hit the ball, and that’s a pretty tough combination to beat.
“The other thing is heading to Florida there is no overconfidence at all. We know the competition level will be high but we’re going to stay grounded and play as a team. It’s going to be amazing, not only going to Florida and playing good teams, but getting to stay together and getting to know each other better, and have fun. It will be a good foundation for the future for all of us.”
Wilmington 14-and-under All-Stars: Lindsay Brown, Page Cruse, Olivia Hawkins, Cameron Rivenbark, Emily King, Meghan Karg, Grayson Arthurs, Shannon Adams, Sailor Funai, Savannah Capo, Ana Williams, Princess Jenkins and Jazmine Rockenhouser.
