The Brattleboro Little League 12-year-old All-Star baseball team had mixed results in the Vermont State Tournament over the weekend at Legion Field in St. Johnsbury.
On July 25, Brattleboro defeated Northwest of Swanton, 9-2, in Game 1. Winning pitcher Tyler Millerick kept Northwest off balance with a nice mix of fastballs and off-speed pitches. He struck out nine batters, and the only run he gave up was a solo homer by Moses Gonyon.
After Millerick reached the 85-pitch limit in the fifth inning, reliever Zinabu McNeice came in to finish up. McNeice struck out the side in the fifth, gave up a solo homer to C.J. McAllester in the sixth, then retired the side in order to nail down the win.
Brattleboro jumped out to a 6-0 lead in the second inning as Nick Bingham, McNeice, Shea Buckley, Alex Lier, Tyler Higley, and Liam Styles all scored. Millerick, Lier and Shane Cyr all scored in the fifth inning.
In Game 2 on Sunday, Brattleboro fell to South Burlington, 12-7. Alex Lier was the losing pitcher for Brattleboro.
Brattleboro opened up a 4-0 lead in the first two innings. Cyr hit a three-run home run to right field in the first inning, and Bingham had an RBI single in the second.
But in the third inning, South Burlington took over as they hit three homers and scored a total of nine runs. They added another run in the fourth and two more in the fifth to make it a 12-4 game. Millerick hit a three-run homer in the sixth, but it was not enough.
On Friday, July 31, Brattleboro will face Northwest at Legion Field at 6 p.m. The winner of this elimination bracket game will take on South Burlington on Saturday, Aug. 1, at 11 a.m. If South Burlington loses, the deciding game of the tournament will be played on Sunday, Aug. 2 at 11 a.m. The winner of this tournament represents Vermont in the New England Region tournament in Bristol, Conn., which begins Aug. 10.
Brattleboro 10-11 All Stars win state title
• Caden Wood hit three home runs to lead the Brattleboro Little League 10-11 All Stars to the state championship with a 22-7 win over Essex Junction at Cioffi Park in St. Albans on July 22.
Brattleboro got two runs in the first inning on Wood's first homer, only to have Essex Junction come back and take a 3-2 lead on Matt Safer's three-run shot.
After that, Brattleboro took control, sending 10 batters to the plate and scoring six times in the second inning. Jack Pattison's bases-loaded single and a double by Wood keyed the inning.
A solid outing by winning pitcher Elias Gradinger limited Essex Junction to one run over the next four innings, while Brattleboro scored three runs in the fourth, two in the fifth, and nine in the top of the sixth to clinch the title.
Aaron Slade's double ignited Brattleboro in the fourth inning, while Alex Carpenter hit a two-run double in the fifth-inning. Wood hit a three-run homer in the sixth, which also featured bases-loaded hits from Ryan Bird and Brett Parsons.
Essex Junction threatened to get back in the game in the fifth, but Brattleboro turned a double play to snuff out the rally.
Wood led the Brattleboro offense with five hits and scored five runs, while Carpenter had four hits and Gradinger had two. Aaron Petrie scored four times. Safer, Andrew Goodrich, and Liam Smith had two hits each for Essex Junction.
Post 5 knocked out of state Legion tourney
• Top-seeded Brattleboro Post 5 won its first game, but lost the next two for an early exit from the Vermont American Legion Baseball Tournament.
Post 5 opened the tournament on July 23 at St. Peter's Field in Rutland with a 9-7 win over Franklin County, the No. 4 seed in the Northern Division. While Brattleboro led this game from start to finish, Franklin County kept it close until the end.
Despite not being particularly sharp, George Atkins was the winning pitcher for Post 5. He lasted seven innings, with Danny Richard throwing the final two innings to earn the save. The losing pitcher was Kyle Combs, who gave up five runs in the second inning.
Brattleboro had 11 hits in this game, four of them from Chris McAuliffe. Atkins had two hits and drove in four runs,. Post 5 also stole eight bases safely, with Cam Wright getting steals and scoring three runs.
On July 24 at Castleton University, Post 5 got shut out by the defending state champs, Essex Post 91, 5-0.
The story of this game was Sam Mikell, who struck out 19 batters over nine innings in a complete game two-hitter. Both those hits came in the first inning. After that, the big right-hander from Champlain Valley Union High School was unhittable.
Richardson gave up two runs in the first inning, one more in the third, and two runs in the fourth to take the loss. Kassidi Ramirez and Sam Ogenoff each threw two innings of scoreless relief, but Mikell was mowing down the Post 5 hitters.
Post 5 then faced Rutland in Castleton in a elimination bracket game on July 25 and lost 11-8. Brattleboro, which finished the season with an 18-3 record, hasn't won a state Legion title since 1999.
Nicole Ritchie wins two silver medals in rowing at Pan Am Games
• As her mom, Diana Wahle, tells the story, her daughter Nicole Claire Wahle Ritchie was always an athlete and a daredevil.
“[She] got the fourth-grade chin-up award at Putney Central School. At Hilltop Montessori Middle School, she thought it would be fun to scale their three story school building. At Putney School in 2004, on Long Spring with Joe Holland's group of students, she rowed from Putney down the Connecticut River to the Long Island Sound and began to realize how happy she was just being out on the water.”
Those experiences paid off earlier this month as Ritchie and her doubles rowing partner, Lindsay Meyer, represented the United States in the XVII Pan American Games in St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada, and won two silver medals.
In the July 13 double sculls rowing medal race, Ritchie and Meyer claimed the silver medal. Rowing website Row2k called their performance “stunning.” In the July 15 women's quad, they won a second silver. In both races, they came in a close second to Canada.
Ritchie, 28, is a graduate of Bates College, where she was captain of the rowing team. During her time at Bates, she was named a Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association First Team All-American three years in a row, and her team competed successfully at all levels, including the NCAA championships.
Her coach at Bates, Peter Steenstra, said that “Nicole knew better than anyone that, despite her extraordinary individual strength, nothing is achieved in this sport without the combined efforts of many.”
After college, Ritchie continued competitive training at the Vesper Boat Club, one of the historic clubs on Boathouse Row in Philadelphia. That move brought her into a community of rowers of all ages. She combines five hours of daily rowing practice with coaching high school students from a variety of Philadelphia public and private high schools.
Diana said that rowing “is a sport with no stars” that “rewards hard work more than talent. Over her years of practice, Nicole realizes that to excel in rowing you need to act with a clear mind and be totally focused on what's happening in the moment. You and your rowing partner need to be aligned. You need to keep your critical mind at bay. All these learnings served her well at the Pan Am Games.”
And they might just serve her well if she makes the U.S. Olympic Team next year and competes in the Rio Games.