A well-traveled summer for the Junior Little League team from Irmo came to an end Aug. 19 at the Junior League World Series in Taylor, Mich.

The walk-off 3-2 loss to the host team from Michigan in the United States Championship game was a tough one to swallow but the journey to the biggest stage in U14 baseball is an accomplishment and experience they’ll remember forever.

“We had our opportunities,” Irmo head coach Pat Gravelle said. “In the seventh inning we had bases loaded and we just didn’t squeeze a run across. Our bats had been really good. I just knew we were gonna get a hit and bring two in but we didn’t.”

Despite the loss, Gravelle was proud of what the team accomplished and some of the resilience shown by a few of his players who had to play different positions throughout the summer run.

He first alluded to his son, Dalton, being forced to play catcher after the team lost their other catchers due to other obligations and multiple injuries.
“Dalton was playing catcher and it’s not his primary position, it’s a secondary position for him,” Gravelle said. “He became our primary catcher and he played a great tournament. He made a couple bumps but made up for them and did really well.”

Gravelle also complimented the play of left fielder Charlie Todd.

“Charlie just brings such a great personality to the game itself,” he added. “He was our number two batter and pitched several times. He’s one of those guys we relied on a lot to get things done. He hit a pretty big home run for us and made some truly outstanding plays out in the field. He played left field, center field, pitcher and played shortstop for us.”

Even with all the success that the team had on the field, Gravelle’s biggest takeaway and favorite memory is the bond his team formed with some of the international players. All of the participating teams stayed in the same hotel so during some down time, the Irmo players were able to hang out and interact with fellow Junior Leaguers from places like Puerto Rico, Canada, Curacao, Chinese Taipei and the Czech Republic.

“In Michigan, it was different than anything we’ve been a part of and we’ve played a ton of baseball. With it being international, the kids’ best friends up there were from Puerto Rico,” he said. “There’s a big language barrier there and Google translate helped out a ton but the kids shared numbers and they’ve still been texting back and forth. It was amazing.”

“Being a dad, not necessarily just being a coach here but being a dad, I just thought it was amazing,” he added. “I was watching them back and forth and they’re all 14. They all act exactly the same; they just didn’t know how to communicate that with each other. It was really cool.”

The team’s journey started off at the district level. Normally, Irmo has to beat teams like Mid-Carolina and Trenholm at the district level but this season, neither organization entered a team so Irmo got to advance to the state tournament in Greenville.

Irmo breezed through the state tournament, winning all their games and capturing the state crown. The next stop was Bridgewater, Va. for the regional tournament.

In Bridgewater, Irmo was pitted against teams from all over the southeast, including squads from Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina.

Irmo led off with a close 10-7 win over Virginia and followed it up the next day with a dominant 12-2 win over West Virginia in the winners’bracket. In the next game, Irmo suffered their first loss in a close 4-2 game against Florida, which put them in an elimination game against Virginia.

For the second time in region bracket play, Irmo defeated the team from Virginia 6-4 to advance to the region championship where they had to face Florida once again.

Irmo wasn’t just familiar with the team from Florida because of their previous loss in this year’s tournament, but this Florida team was the same team that beat Irmo in last year’s region championship.

Irmo redeemed last year’s championship defeat by beating Florida 5-3 and punched their ticket to the Junior League World Series.

At the Junior League World Series in Taylor, Irmo found themselves facing elimination early after a close 3-2 loss to a team from Hillsdale, N.J. They rebounded nicely from that loss by clobbering a team from Lubbock, Texas 13-3 to keep the run alive.

In one of the highest scoring games of the tournament, Irmo beat a team from Illinois by a score of 14-12 to knock them out of the tournament and set up a rematch with the team from Hillsdale, NJ.

Just like in the regional tournament, Irmo avenged a previous loss to advance further. Their 3-2 win over Hillsdale moved them on to the U.S. championship, where the magical run came to an end.