The Oviedo Thunder capped off an successful week of baseball by taking

third place in the ultra competitive WInter Springs “Swing Into Spring” tournament.  Out of 9 teams, the Thunder rolled into 3rd place.   Here is a recap of the Saturday and Sunday games.

On Saturday morning, the Oviedo Thunder played against a good Longwood Braves team, The Longwood Braves started strong by launching several balls into the outfield.  While our boys could not prevent all the runners from scoring, solid fielding and cut off throws prevented any serious damage. After a couple of innings, the Thunder began to work over the Longwood Braves pitcher’s confidence, we began to run the bases more aggressively,   On several occasions, the Thunder turned a single into a score by aggressive base running.  On the other hand, when the Braves tried to stretch out a few extra bases, the Thunder made several outstanding plays. Most notably, a well hit fly ball that could of spelled a disaster resulted in a  resulted in a double play that disheartened the Longwood Braves.

Final score:

Oviedo Thunder: 11

Longwood Braves: 6

On the Saturday afternoon game, the Thunder bats exploded in the quarter finals.  In what only could be described as offensive assault on the Winter Springs Matrix, the Thunder had their best performance yet.  It was effectively a back to back game so the Thunder so it took little time for the Thunder to get going.  However, once this got started in the Third Inning, an offense explosion took place. Trevor and I were not able to attend the game so the details are a little scant, but I think I could hear the distinct "ping" sound of the baseball being shot on multiple singles and runs scored on my drive to Daytona.  The Thunder scored 18 runs in the third inning ! 

Coach Kenny, in classic understatement, called me at the race and said, "We killed them !"  Over the sound of race cars in the background, I made him repeat it again since I though I did not hear him correctly.

Oviedo Thunder: 22

Winter Springs Matrix: 6

On Sunday morning, the entire team got together in what would be the toughest matchup to date.  The Oviedo Knights were favored to win the tournament with a team that has played for two years together.  The Oviedo Knights were able to get a few scores on the board early and they probably thought they would coast to another win.  The Oviedo Thunder could have called it a day and got blown off the field, but not our team.

"I told the kids to not to give up and we were still in the game.  We just had to stay calm and play our game," Coach Jim commented in the post game interview.

Our boys responded well and decided they were not going to go down without a real fight.  Time after time, our boys came up with big stops when needed. Where there were some hits by the Knights, the Thunder were able to keep the damage down.  At the same time, The Oviedo Thunder managed to come up big plays on offense.  The bats heated up along with the sun in in the third inning and they managed to close the gap to a couple of runs.  Unfortunately, the Knights were able to put together a couple of hits along with some steals and squeaked out a win.

"I was so proud of our kids," said Coach Jim. " We played well throughout the whole tournament.  Anytime you can go into a competitive tournament and win 4 games in a row you have to be proud.  The whole team pulled together and the kids have gotten better by playing against strong competition."