The Leamington 13U Lakers went undefeated in the London Badgers tournament on the June 13-15 weekend, bringing home the gold by defeating the Windsor Stars in the final.
The locals started off the weekend with a pair of victories, but despite being 2 and 0 finished second in round-robin play.
Strong pitching performances by Asher Grossi and Robbie Raffoul led them to victory in the tournament opener over the Kitchener Panthers. They followed that up with a win over Mississauga North, on the strength of great pitching by Alex Antonios and Brody Van Roie.
Their second-place seeding led them to a quarter-final matchup against Kitchener once more and the Lakers made no mistake, running over the Panthers 21-6.
Conner Blain started the game with a strong pitching performance and Brady George came in to close out the game. The Lakers’ bats were the story of this game with Evan Ketler, Christian Rutgers and Brody Church leading the way with three hits each.
In the semi-final match, the Lakers found themselves down 6-0 in the top half of the first to the Mitchell Astros, turning to Brody Church to get them out of the first inning and he pitched 4-1/3 innings of no hit baseball, striking out nine of the 13 batters he faced.
The offense was sparked by this performance and rattled off 16 runs over the next five innings led by a Church three-run bomb and multi-hit games by Quinn Chevalier, Conner Blain and Evan Ketler.
The finals brought the Lakers to the top-seed Windsor Stars. Asher Grossi was tasked to start the game and he delivered, pitching five innings of three-hit baseball allowing only one run while striking out eight.
The offense kept the hot bats going with Zander Cook, Griffin Horne, Carter Demant and Quinn Chevalier getting in multi-hits to lead the Lakers to a 13-1 victory and the title.
