PEARL CITY—A small team with big hearts crushed the competition this past weekend, as the Pearl City little league minors team took home the 2010 Hawaii State Little League Baseball Minors 9-10 year old Championship title beating Kihei 16-4.
On a hot Saturday at Aiea Annex field, the Pearl City all-star team took the field against Kihei, the District III champions representing Maui in the five-team double-elimination state tournament. Going into the final game, the little leaguers prepared for a month before winning the district tournament to go to the state tournament just four days after.
The mini-sluggers known for putting up huge numbers on the scoreboard as Kihei took the lead by two runs after just one inning. However, Pearl City wasn’t phased as they came right back in the second inning scoring six runs. They would later to go blow past the Maui boys bringing in ten runs in the fourth inning to put the game away.
“[The team] was really disciplined, our hitters didn’t swing at bad pitches and we hit the ball pretty well,” said Chad Obara, manager (head coach) for Pearl City. “We have no real standout players, out of the 14 on the-all of them contributed.”
Obara, who coached little league in 2006, was able to manage the tournament team after winning the little league regular season with his Pearl City Reds team. Even though he had less than a month to prepare the 14 chosen players from different teams to take on the top teams around the island and state, Obara continued to encourage the team to take each game as it is.
“I tried to teach them that every game is important, no game is more important than any other,” said Obara. “ Wanted to minimize the pressure for them and help them remember that each game is nothing special, its just another game.”
Pearl City, which featured three girls on the team and in the entire tournament, played a total of only three games in the double elimination tournament as they stayed undefeated in the winners bracket. And as the last Kihei batter struck out for the final out of the game, the Pearl City team rushed the pitcher’s mound jumping, piling on top of relief pitcher Kanoa Meridith in celebration of the victory.
“They were so happy to carry around the state champs banner, they even tripped over the banner getting it all dirty because they were so excited,” said Obara. “The best thing about this team is their willingness to back up each other, no matter who messed up or how many times someone did, no one cared, they didn’t panic, never gave up and kept on playing.”
Pearl City finished 11-1, out scoring their opponents 155-47, 51-8 in the state tournament alone.
