The Will Smith Memorial 9U Tadpole Tournament featured a storybook finish for one of the host teams.
The weekend baseball tourney in Walnut Grove that involved 12 teams consisting of seven, eight, and nine-year-olds playing 23 games over four days, all boiled down to one run.
When the dust at home plate settled, Cooper Hill slid in for the winning run as the North Langley Trappers edged the Cloverdale Black Wolves 11-10 in the final at Walnut Grove Park’s George Zarrelli Diamond.
Cooper made a break for home from third base after his teammate Brayden Rawe hit a ground ball towards first in the final inning. His slide knocked the ball out of the Cloverdale catcher’s glove to win the game in walk-off fashion, marking the first time in the tournament’s history that a North Langley team has captured the first place trophy.
Brayden Rawe received player of the game honours in the final for his game-winning RBI.
Both the Trappers and Black Wolves had to win two previous games to get to the finals together and it was a tight final the entire way.
The weekend featured six North Langley teams, three Cloverdale teams, plus squads from Langley Baseball, White Rock, and Surrey Canadians to round out this three pool, round robin event.
In its fourth year, the tournament honours Will Smith, who passed away in 2013 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 47.
He was a coach and volunteer with North Langley Baseball for many years, plus played Little League with Whalley back in the 1970s and ’80s, a time in which he played in a pair of Little League World Series competitions.
