Dudley/Budweiser USSSA NIT

The mighty Dudley stood up to its billing as one of the top tournaments in the country, thats for sure. Backman/Dan Smith/Menosse/Easton also stood up as the undisputed number one team in the land, as it steam rolled through this one to the championship. The Easton boys were relentless on offense and played extremely well defensively in this win. The offense was again led by Jeff Hall who week after week continues to hit it. Hank Garris, Brett Helmer also contributed to the offense. Jason Kendrick had his best tournament of the year and local boy Scott Brown had a very good tournament for the Easton boys. This bunch is proving to be the best in 2003 and have now made it two in a row at the mighty Dudley. This is where they took off last year on route to becoming the number one team in the country. This weekend they did it without the services of short stop Demound Thomas who was injured earlier on in the tournament and was replaced by Ed Rosado who played extremely well filling in. Another good job by the Backman squad. Congratulations on the win. Finishing in second place was Alesium/Chase/Reese/Easton who are proving to be a very good team on both baseball fields and 300 foot fields. Manager Gary Jost has this team playing great softball and are capable of beating anyone in the country, any weekend. This team has great defense and can best hit it with the best of them. They may lack one more power hitter when they get into the world tournaments in the big stadium, we will see. The boys from Las Vegas beat Resmondo in a very tough ball game by the score of 50-47 to send the Resmondo team home. Alesium then had the task of trying to beat the number one team in the country twice but fell short in the first game of the championship and settled for second place. Great job Alesium. Third place went to Resmondo/Hague who had been struggling against both Dan Smith and Alesium as they seemed to come up short in most of the games against these two teams. So far this season the Resmondo boys have lost four games to Backman, and three games to Alesium. I think the Resmondo boys are playing good games against both of those teams but just seem to fall short and don’t get it done early on in this season. Resmondo has not used a set line up this season due to injuries to pitcher Andy Purcell, and short stop Dal Beggs has proven costly. I believe it has been very difficult for the management of the Resmondo team to get a set line up because of the amount of very good players on the team, and I am sure they are trying to figure it out. Resmondo boys played very good this weekend as they lost a very tough game with rival Backman as they had a chance to win it in the bottom of the seventh but came up short, they also lost a very close one to Alesium. This team will have to pick it up and start winning or it will be a long season, they have the talent but are not getting it done when it counts. Fourth place went to Doc’s/Easton who is starting to get it going lately. this team is very solid on defense and base hit when they need to. This weekend they got a stellar performance out of Dean Semmon who was 26 for 28. I believe this team will be there in the A worlds and could win some national championships. Good job sterling and Doc. Fifth place goes to very nice a-b team out of Seattle, Washington who is sponsored by a woman, Lonnie Henderson, the ex-wife of former major league baseball star Dave Henderson. This young lady is a joy to watch as her team plays in Major level softball. This weekend was especially nice as her and her team got the berth to Mickey Mouse World in Orlando, Florida for the 2003 USSSA World Championship. This young team has some very good players and can score some runs and should be very competative in the class A worlds. Once again I would like to say what a class tournament the Dudley is and what a great job Warne Belem does running this great event. The weather was perfect the city had the fields in great shape and Gary Turnberg who is the USSSA director did another great job running this Minnesota USSSA tournament. I really enjoyed going to the Dudley and watching this great tournament, once again great job by all the teams and especially Kevitt Easton, the old boys played extremely well and just came up a little short of winning the berth. For you people who don’t know they have some of the old Spectrum players and Long Haul players.