Brad Wallin Memorial Tournament

The Brad Wallin Memorial Tournament is a big tournament Dunlap plays in each year.  And when I say big, I mean huge.  I believe there were more than 256 teams this year.  There are 8 age groups from 8U through 15U.  Brad died of cancer at age 10 and his family created this tournament in his memory as a fundraiser for St. Jude.  It is the biggest tournament our boys play in this summer with 20 teams in the 9U bracket.  We played two pool play games, one on Thursday and one on Saturday to get seeded.  We were seeded 11th after the pool play ended on Saturday.

Our first game on Sunday was at 8am so it was an early morning for the boys.  Drew pitched a complete six inning game.  We won the first game 5-2.  We won our second game 14-10.  Drew pitched the final two innings of that game.  We lost the semi-final game 10-1.  Drew started the last game and pitched 3 strong innings against a very good Chicago team.  We won that game so we ended up with 3rd place!  The boys had a GREAT tournament!  They made plays in the field and their bats were hot!!

I have to admit, Drew pitching 11 innings had me worried for his arm.  A lot of tournaments put restrictions on how much the boys can pitch, but this one didn't.  This is the only time he has pitched that much so I am not too concerned, but he certainly couldn't do that every weekend.  

I rarely take pictures or videos during games this year (I need to get better before the season ends in two weeks!), but here is a video of Drew hitting: