History was recently made in West Plains sports when the West Plains 11 – 12 Little League All Stars went to the state championships and won — twice.
Although they had made the playoffs many times in the past, they’d always been quickly eliminated — often by double digits — in the first two games of the series.
And in the league’s 15-year history they had won only a single tournament game.
“Most of the time we go to the state tournament we lose two and we come home,” Josh Ashcroft, team manager said.
But this year, after years of work and effort, they won their first two games and advanced to the second round of play.
West side teams
OK, you’re probably thinking, big deal, some local kids won a couple of baseball games. But that attitude would be shortsighted because this is also a David and Goliath-type story.
In this case, Goliath is the densely populated metropolis of Puget Sound, where Little League champion teams are formed by kids cherry-picked from a relatively well-heeled pool of thousands.
“We have four little majors teams that we form our All Star teams from,” West Plains Little League President Stacy Ashcroft said. “The teams on the west side have on average eight or nine teams. They’re pulling from a huge group of kids.”
Places like Bothell and Federal Way — Bellevue alone is five times the size of Cheney, Medical Lake and Airway Heights combined.
And because of the temperate west side climate, those west side teams also have a longer season in which to hone their skills.
“They’re bigger and a much more established Little League,” Josh said. “Probably 30 years in the making.”
The David side of this story is the West Plains Little League, with about 400 kids to pick from ranging in age from 4 – 12, according to West Plains Little League President Stacy Ashcroft.
Championship play
The West Plains All Stars advanced to the championships this year after beating Liberty Lake’s Riverview 2–0 in a three-game, post-season District 13 championship series.
They then traveled to Richland, Wash., on July 20-21, where they beat Burlington 6-5 in game one of double elimination state championship play on a walk-off single in the bottom of the eighth inning, after six innings of regular play.
Mia Ashcroft started on the mound, going seven innings throwing 85 pitches — the league pitching limit.
With the score tied 4-4, the game went into extra innings at the end of the sixth. While the scoreless seventh inning was played normally, going into the eight inning meant playing under Texas tie-breaker rules, where the offense places a runner at second base at the top of the inning with no outs, which allowed Burlington to score for a 5-4 lead going into the bottom half.
With the game on the line, West Plains put Jace Vega on second. Ashcroft started at the plate, hitting a triple into the left-center gap to bring Vega in to score.
Game tied.
Then, with the crowd on their feet and the go-ahead, game winning run on third, Jacob Ulrich stepped up to the plate and hit the game-winning ball, again into left-center.
“Right after I hit the ball I almost froze for a little bit,” Ulrich, said. “But I looked over and saw coach Josh on the third base line. I saw Mia at third base, just like, watching the ball go right over the short stop. And then Mia just like looks at me, and I like, smiled for a split second, and then I just started running to first. And I was like, oh my God, this is awesome. It felt so good to win that game.”
West Plains faced off against Walla Walla Valley in game two, winning in an 8-0 blowout in errorless play to advance the next level of championship play.
“That was a game to remember,” Josh said.
Coleman Randles started on the hill to earn the win.
Right fielder Chris Wilson made what Josh described as three “amazing (ESPN) Sports Center top-10 catches,” during the game.
It also helped that West Plains brought in every runner who was in scoring position.
“It was a complete team effort in that game,” Josh said.
West Plains then took on Goliath in games three and four on July 23-24. First it was Federal Way who beat West Plains 13-3. Then it was North Bothell in game four. Although they were up 5-4 in the top of the fifth, West Plains ended up losing when Bothell came back in the fifth and sixth innings to win 9-5, and eliminate the upstarts from the east side of the state.
Building success
This year’s success didn’t just happen. Like anything else, the league’s rise has been equal parts work and passion.
For Josh, it was his own youthful team efforts that never panned out that he couldn’t forget, and a passion to win that he brought to coaching.
For the past five years he’s worked to find opportunities for victory.
Asked why, and Josh said it was for kids to have an opportunity to compete at a higher level and be competitive when they get there.
“To believe in themselves,” he said.
When he first began coaching Little League with his son, who has since aged out of the league, Josh saw a competitive gap and set out to fill it, he said. Then his daughter, Mia, started playing.
“We’ve just been building upon that,” he said.
It worked. Four players on the West Plains 11 – 12 All Stars, Ulrich, Ashcroft, Randles and Dawes Hanson, have worked their way through all the Little League age groups — 8 – 10, 9 – 11 and finally 11 – 12 — representing four years of work to finally advance beyond the first round.
“They’ve been a part of the whole Little League process,” Stacy said of the effort the four alone have put in, along with Josh. “They’ve gone and they’ve lost, and lost, and lost.”
For the four, this year’s tournament was their third as Little Leaguers.
“And they finally got a victory,” Josh said. ““It was some good baseball.”
This years West Plains 8 – 10 and 9 – 11 All Star teams were both eliminated in their initial two games.
The winning 11 – 12 state championship team eventually advances to the Little League World Series broadcast on ESPN.
Mark your calendars: next year Cheney will be hosting the 11 – 12 All Star Little League Championships. Who knows, it could the year West Plains takes it all, and on their home diamond.
Lee Hughes can be reached at lee@cheneyfreepress.com.
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