Why is the Utah rep in the regional tournaments always from the St George area? Are they just always better, or are they the only ones playing in Little League affiliated leagues?
Warm weather allows for year round play. No offseason. In today’s environment of specialized youth athletics, this is big… Personally I’d rather play all the sports at a decent level, rather than choosing just one to specialize at that young of an age, but that’s just my opinion.
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When my sons were playing comp baseball, we’d go to tournaments in Vegas or San Diego and get hammered.
The players from Arizona and SoCal were so much more polished, but they didn’t look like they were enjoying it that much.
Seems like typically St. George area and Taylorsville have the stronger teams. Santa Clara was first Utah team to ever make to Williamsport last year. In past Utah has competed with California and now our regional is Nevada, Wyoming, and Montana.
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I know that when I was involved in youth baseball many, many years ago; here in SLC, many of the leagues were affiliated with WBBA. Don’t know if that’s the case any more.
In any event, I’ve been watching the regionals for a few years now, and the Utah team is always from Santa Clara.
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Ah @NewbombTurk you are now in my wheelhouse. I have been a volunteer with Little League for over 20 years and will now give you all the details you want.
Little League International has local leagues throughout the world that are basically small non-profit franchised businesses. Leagues may choose to be affiliated with LLI or other youth baseball organizations.
In Utah, the only youth leagues that decided to align with LLI are the leagues from Cedar City and South. All other youth baseball played in Utah is affiliated with other organizations, Babe Ruth leagues, Cal Ripken leagues, etc.
Because only those southern leagues are affiliated with LLI, they are the only leagues eligible in the State of Utah to play in what LLI calls the International Tournament.
If there were any leagues in Utah that decided to affiliate with LLI, then they could participate in the state championship tournament which wins them the right to play in the LLI Mountain Regional to see who gets to go to Williamsport.
Hope this helps.
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Utah just got past Montana 2-1 (survived a 1 out runners on 2nd/3rd situation in the bottom of the 6th (last) inning). Now meets Nevada tomorrow for a chance to go back to Williamsport.
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Since that Coop kid only threw about 10 pitches, can he still pitch tomorrow?
During today’s broadcast, a graphic was shown that had pitch counts on the left and # of required rest days on the right and it showed if they throw less than 20 pitches (or 15 perhaps) they can pitch the next day, but I presume they have a limit on combined pitches over 2 days. (Seems the rules are always rather fluid and being fine-tuned from season to season).
Thought I had seen Taylorsville mentioned in youth baseball stories in the past (back when newspapers had sports sections that covered that sort of thing) but presumably that was for some of the ‘other’ competitions mentioned about…
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If you throw less than 20 pitches, you can pitch the next day and throw up to the 85 pitches. They do have a rule that you can’t throw 3 consecutive days, even if you throw 5 pitches one day, 10 the next day, you couldn’t pitch the third day.
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Wondering if the teams that make it to the International part of the tournament in Williamsport get a following or TV viewers back home. Was watching a bit of it on my lunch and in the top of the 6th, Curacao, down to their last out against Venezuela, had a 2 run home run and ended up winning 2-1,. Can imagine the reactions from both sides in that one. In a few hours Taiwan plays Japan.