Life With THREE Boys: Cardinals Win STATE!

It all started when Rylan was 6. I blame Dustin! He got into Ryan's head that baseball was one of the greatest sports to be played. Dustin drafted Rylan onto the Cardinals and Ryan began helping with coaching the team 3 years ago. Our family has never been the same!! Baseball, baseball, baseball...is our life from February to August. We have made it to the state tournament 3 years. Some years we have lost quickly. Once we made a few games into the tournament before losing and this year, we finally went the whole way! After going to a few of these tournaments, we began wondering if we could host one and get the 'home field advantage'! Last summer, Ryan began asking JD if we could make a bid to host the tournament here. He was reluctant to do this but, in the end he made the bid and we got it! We have looked forward to this event for a year. However, I must admit I never thought we would actually win it! (don't tell Ryan :)

This year's tournament consisted of 10 teams. We played Bousqueville in our first game. We didn't play so well but it was enough to give us our first victory. The score was 4-2. We then played another team from Brownwood, the Astros. It is never enjoyable to go to these tournaments and have to play a team from your hometown. But it seems to always happen that way. This game gave us our 2nd victory. We were so thrilled to stay on the winner's side of the bracket...we had not done that before!! It is a much easier tournament when you are able to do this! Wednesday night we played the Troup Rattlers, the other undefeated team in the tournament. Rylan pitched this game and did a good job. The Cardinals had lots of great hits and that was what kept us on top. This win put us in the championship game Thursday night. In the end, we played the Clifton White Sox in the finals. They had played their way out of the losers bracket and were low on pitching. We feel extremely blessed to have had so many things go our way during this season. We know God had way more important things to look over but we know he did bless us this week! We are thankful! Winning the state championship has been a dream of this team for several years and they finally did it! Way to go Cardinals!!!