The Cinnaminson 9U baseball team completed its 2016 season on Thursday night with the Tri-State Elite (TSE) championship game.
Cinnaminson hosted the game at Memorial Park.
Cinnaminson fell to the Lindenwold Assault 16-6 to finish the year with a 27-10 record.
The TSE is a league with dozens of travel teams. In the spring season there are as many as 50 teams in the league at the 9U level that play each other.
At the end of the season, if the team is in the top eight in the division, it competes in a playoff tournament. The winner of the tournament gets a free tournament on TSE next season.
“The TSE league is basically the regular season. In the township, in April and May, the boys participate in an intramural league. The league that we enter as a travel team is TSE,” manager Art Alessandroni said.
“All the other games we play are tournaments we fundraise to get into. We hosted our own Summer Slam Tournament. We didn’t make it to the finals in that one. We went 2-2.”
The 9U team won two tournaments this season, one more than last year.
The team also advanced further this year in the district tournament than last.
Cinnaminson’s two tournament wins came at the Burlington Township Falcon Frenzy and the Maple Shade Summer Classic.
The Pirates went 3-1 at the Falcon Frenzy and 4-0 at the Summer Classic to take home tourney titles.
“Over each game they learned that there’s a different hero each night. They learned how to come together and play as a team overall this year,” Alessandroni said.
“They began to understand and learn that they’re not going to get a hit every time or make every play and that that’s ok.”
Alessandroni said that the team improved in almost all facets of the game throughout the season, but was impressed with one specific area.
“We refer to practice as the classroom and the game as a test. For the boys to apply so much of what they learned in practice to the game at this age, is impressive. They’ve taken a huge step forward to learn the fundamentals and the defensive side of the game.”
In a season that began on April 10 and ended on July 14, a full three months of baseball for this group proved challenging at times.
Teams are allowed to play with eight players on the field, but must surrender an out each inning. The Pirates recently won a game with just eight players on the field.
Most nights, the Pirates had to take the field with just nine players, sometimes 10, due to injuries.
For a team to compete in a 37-game season and win 27 of those games, some with limited numbers, is quite a testament to the players and the coaches.
On a side note, this is just the second year of kid-pitch for this team. At 7U, it is machine pitch. 8U is the first year for kid-pitch.
“The kids hits off a machine at 7-years-old. They pitch for the first time at age 8. This was their second year pitching,” Alessandroni said.
“From 8 to 9 they start to apply the fundamentals of backing up, hitting the cutoff, catchers blocking balls and more. They were able to apply a good percentage of it as the games went on.”
Photos provided by Art Alessandroni.
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