Madison held the VFW Youth Baseball State Championships on July 12th – 14th. The Avon 8U baseball team under the guidance of coaches Nathan Schultz, Dwight Brandt, Kenny Podzimek and Colt Wolf recently played in the state tournament, bringing home a State Championship title. This particular group of 8U boys had been playing together for the past two years. They were a very young team last year, but it gave the boys time to learn how to play together and become a team. Coach Schultz knew that going into this season that the team was going to be something special, and he could not have been more correct. In addition to winning a state championship title, the team also ended the year with a 11-2 record in the LMVC League and an overall astonishing season record of 21-2. Nathan Schultz is the head coach of the Avon 8U baseball team. He has been the head coach of this team for the past two years, but has been helping as a coach for three years. Nathan originally got into coaching baseball because his oldest son Beckett was starting baseball and he wanted to help Beckett in the development of the sport. Once Coach Joe Sees moved up to coach the 10U team, Nathan stepped into the head coaching position for the 8U team. He loves the fact that he gets to coach both of his sons, Beckett and Braxton. Nathan knows that coaching is a lot of work, but is so rewarding. Every player that Nathan has coached feels like they have become part of his family. Players for the 8U boys’ team this 2024 season were Dayton Brandt, Beckett Schultz, Cowan Wolf, Tyson Voigt, Gabe Johnson, Bode Podzimek, Jaden Ratzlaff, Braxton Schultz, Eli Olson, Mason Johnson, Jayden Corey and bat boy, Jordan Ratzlaff. The players are between the ages of 7 and 9 years of age depending on when their birthdays fell during the calendar year. With everyone’s crazy summer schedules the team was only able to get together for a practice once a week. It did help that quite a few of the 8U kids started on the 10U baseball team that won the LMVC Championship, so that helped them gain a lot of experience as well. In the 8U state tournament the entire game lasted 6 innings. There is not a pitcher for each team, instead there is a spring powered pitching machine that is used. It does require a coach to put the ball on the pitching machine and when the batter is ready, the coach then releases the spring which in turn catapults the ball over home plate for the player to swing at. When it came to the VFW Youth Baseball State Tournament, the Avon team played in the red division. The first three games of the tournament were done in pool play where there were 30 teams, but only had to play three of the teams in these first set of games. Avon beat Madison 10-3; Beresford, 12-1; and Aurora 20-3 in pool play. How the teams did during pool play determined their seed for the tournament. In pool play, Avon walked away with a record of 3-0, earning them the #2 seed overall of the 30 teams for the actual tournament. The 30 teams were then divided into divisions (red, white and blue) based on their pool play with red being the top division. Sunday the 14th was the day of the tournament. With the red division being made up of the toughest 10 teams out of the 30, it was going to be a very competitive day of baseball for the Pirates. Their first game was against the West Central Rebels. It took an extra inning, but the team pulled through with an 8-7 victory and Gabe Johnson having the game winning hit. The second game of the day was against a very tough Harrisburg team. The entire game was back and forth on the score board, but the Pirates had the tenacity and ended the game with a 6-5 victory. With the victory against Harrisburg, the Avon Pirates were now headed for the State Championship game against Mitchell. The competition was well matched against Mitchell with a tie score of 6 in the bottom of the 6th inning. Jaden Ratzlaff knocked in Bode Podzimek for the game winning run, pushing the Pirates to a 7-6 victory. Unfortunately, during the championship game, first baseman Beckett Schultz became overheated and had to leave the game, but that did not stop the Pirates. The rest of the team in Beckett’s absence stepped up to the plate and played some different positions than they normally had and finished out the game to come out with Avon’s first ever state baseball title. To put it into perspective what kind of competition that the Avon 8U team was up against here is some information about the teams Avon played against. Avon is a town of 600 people. Madison a town of 6000 people, Hartford a town of 3500 people, Harrisburg a town of 8500 people and Mitchell a town of 15000 people. Most of the teams that Avon competed against were select traveling teams making this championship title all the sweeter. The coaches could not be prouder of their team and how hard they worked. With next year will come some big changes for the Avon 8U team. All but four of this year’s players will be moving up to the 10U baseball team. Not only did the 8U have an excellent team, but they had an amazing group of parents. The team did not have any sponsors so they had to come up with a way to pay for the insurance and entry fees to the tournament. The parents stepped up and sold cookies in order to help pay for those fees. Mr. Paul Kuhlman was very generous and donated food and drinks for the entire team during their tournament and the team definitely wants to recognize him for his generosity. Coach Schultz had a few words of thanks for the community, parents and players. He wanted to thank all the kids for their hard work this season. To his fellow coaches, he would not have been able to do this without them. Thank you to the parents of the players for always bringing the kids to the games no matter the distance. Nathan would also like to thank his amazing wife, Autumn, for all of her help throughout the season, but especially when it came to the state tournament in organizing food, getting the insurance paperwork done, etc. she did a lot of behind-thescenes work. Thank you to the Avon community, for the words of congratulations, encouragement throughout the season, and following the games online. It was amazing to return from the state tournament and be escorted in to Avon by firetrucks and a convoy of cars. Allowing the players to ride around town in the fire trucks and have people congratulate them as they went by created some amazing memories for the boys. If anyone is interested in seeing the trophy the team brought home, the Avon Community Bank has graciously allowed the team to display it there. Even though they did not have any fancy banners to hang in their dugout or expensive uniforms, it did not stop the Avon Pirate 8U baseball team from bringing home a state championship title. Congratulations to the players, coaches and parents for such a great season. If this season is any indication as to what is in store for the future of Avon athletes there will be plenty of exciting competitive sporting events ahead.