Glacier All-Stars knocked out at regional tourney

It was like Groundhog Day for the Glacier 14-year-old Babe Ruth all-star team at the regional tournament last week in Moscow, Idaho.

Suffering from fielding and mental mistakes and pitching control problems, Glacier was drubbed 20-5 by Southern Washington in the pool play opener on Aug. 3 and lost to Alberta 15-4 the next day.

Fielding woes continued Thursday as Glacier was defeated by the host Latah team from Moscow, 9-6. After a scheduled day off Thursday and a Friday rainout, Glacier's appearance in the regional tourney ended Saturday with a 15-9 loss to a Coos Bay/North Bend team.

Only the top-two teams in each pool advanced to single-elimination bracket play Saturday evening.

"We did a lot better than we did in the first two," Glacier manager Eric May said of the games against Moscow and Coos Bay/North Bend. "Both were good games until the very end."

Glacier could not fully take advantage of winning the coin flip for home team in all four games as the team's opponents all got off to early leads.

"There were a lot of innings when we had two outs and we'd have an error," May said. "Your pitchers are throwing more pitches. You can't give them four or five outs an inning. That's what we did all week."