The heartbreak is real, but the pride will last forever.
Head coach Grayson Huskins knows his Putnam County 10-and-under Dixie Youth All-Stars baseball team was left heartbroken after closing out its 2022 season with a runner-up finish this past weekend in their state championship tournament. With an 11-1 win over Putnam in the final game at Wrens, Ga., the Perry All-Stars advanced to the Dixie Youth World Series next month in Lumberton, N.C.
But the veteran coach saw only positives in his players’ effort.
“We are super proud of this team. I mean, this community should be proud of these boys. I don’t think a lot of people expected us to get to where we did,” Huskins said. “I did. And our other coaches did. We knew how good these boys were and we knew they were a great group of kids. Of course we were all disappointed. We didn’t win. But we’re still super proud of them.
“I told them right after the championship game, I’ve been coaching baseball almost 30 years and this was one of the better teams, probably the best team, that I’ve ever coached. And that’s from high school all the way down to middle school. I mean, there’s not a weak player on the team here. They were just so much fun to work with, just a great team.”
An opening-night 13-7 loss to North Macon marked a brief setback for the Putnam team’s tourney, but a 14-7 rebound victory over Columbia County on Friday put them back in the hunt. They doubled up on Columbia again with a 10-5 win on Saturday, then exacted payback over North Macon with a solid 6-2 effort later that day.
That left only an undefeated Perry crew to face on Sunday and Putnam responded with an impressive 12-1 victory in the double-loss elimination format. The result essentially reversed later that afternoon, however, in a winner-take-all showdown for the trip to North Carolina.
“Unfortunately, with the loss in the first game we had to come up through the loser’s bracket, so between Saturday and Sunday we played four games in less than 24 hours and that put a real strain on our pitching,” Huskins explained. “It put a strain on us physically and mentally, but we came out the first game Sunday morning and were able to beat the eventual champions and we were all super pumped and excited.
“But then we start the next game and they didn’t do anything different; we didn’t do anything different; it’s just the game of baseball and things turned out different,” he continued. “First game we played Perry, everything we hit was in a gap, but in the championship game everything we hit was right to an infielder. I mean, we put the ball in play, we hit it hard, but they were able to make the defensive plays. We just weren’t able to find a hole.
“And at the same time, they hit two or three that were borderline fair. I can remember at least three balls that were hit right on the line—and I’m not blaming the umpires, they were fair balls—but I mean, two inches over and they would’ve been foul. And those made a big difference.”
Regardless, Huskins added he wanted to thank co-coaches Clyde Harper and Danny Peterson, as well as the team’s parents and Putnam County Recreation Director Scott Haley, for their sportsmanship and support throughout the all-star team’s post-season run.
“It was a three-way effort. I mean, I had the title as head coach, but we all worked together and that helped so much,” he stressed.
“And Scott and Jay (Doss) in the recreation department, they went out of their way to make sure we had everything we needed. They made sure that as coaches we didn’t have to worry about administrative stuff. They let us just do our jobs and that made everything so much better.”