Thanks for the great summer, our coaches wanted to share a few final words before wrapping up and heading towards fall ball, thanks again to everyone who played, coached and supported our Mountain Dream teams.
8U Summer Summary
This was a summer of learning, bonding, trust, and new friendships. Most of the girls on this 8U team were first year players. Not just competitive ball, but first year ever playing the sport. This was a group that fought through lots of odds to truly become a tournament worthy squad of softball players. They learned how to lose and keep their heads held high. They learned how to win with class.
Spending long weekends together in the summer sun, these young athletes grew as a team and formed strong friendships. They knew that they could trust every other girl on the team to back them up, cheer for them, and bring them up when they need it. Something very special for a group made up of girls from 4 different schools.
Winning a medal at the Manzanita Mayhem tournament for getting to the semi-final game was their first taste of success. Then finishing the season with a 3rd place trophy in the 8u B division at the Strawberry Jam. It was a great end to a fun summer.
The future is wide open for these young, strong athletes. It was an absolute pleasure to head up the coaching staff. And, it could not have been possible without the help from my assistant coaches Lucas Carter, and Mountain Dream alumni Vanessa Mathews, and the families who showed incredible support to the team all summer long.
GO DREAMERS!
Coach Kyle Colby
10UB Summer Summary
This team just keeps getting better and better. The Summer 2018 season was the 5th travel season together for 9 of these 11, and that together-ness has really paid off. They’re hitting off of and pitching at the MLB equivalent of 75-80 mph. They’re back-picking and catching opposing baserunners stealing. They handle pickles, cutoffs and D3K situations like they were born doing it. They bunt, steal, slide, bleed, cry, homer, laugh, sunburn, support each other and compete.
We played 5 tournaments, went 16-7 overall in tournament play, and were never one-and-done on a Sunday. We took second overall in Incline Village; went 2-2 (the two losses both in 8-inning games that lasted over 2.5 hours each) at the Regional Championships in Sunnyvale and narrowly missed advancing to Nationals in SoCal; won the silver bracket at Strawberry Jam; and got our first overall tournament championship at Blast by the Bay!!
The whole team also attended the week-long Nike Softball Camp in June in Rocklin, CA, sandwiched between two tournament weekends, where they worked softball over 8 hours per day for four days in temperatures in the 100s and 110s with overnight lows in the 90s.
On the whole, this team worked harder and better, mentally and physically, than ever before. I believe this was a true transition year into what this team can be – playing the game at an exceptionally high level. These girls got a ton of hardware this summer to show for their efforts, and continued to live by our team motto – No Grass Stains, No Glory; No Bruises, No Story.
We can’t wait for fall and everything that follows!
Coach Travis Krepelka
10UC Summer Summary
The Mountain Dream 10UC team hit, ran, caught, threw and cheered their way through an amazing summer of growth and adventure!
This group of athletes were almost all new to tournament softball and to each other, and over the course of 16 tournament games and multiple scrimmages, they went from tentative players to solid competitors.
The team traveled to Salinas, Carmel, San Jose and Watsonville. Plays were made, the dropped 3rd strike rule became an opportunity for an out, and the team ended their season by playing their best games ever at the Strawberry Jam Tournament.
Most importantly, friendships were solidified, and everyone walked away with an even greater love of softball, and a better understanding of the game.
Coach Rebecca Hoover
12U Summer Summary
26 games, won, thats about half of them! Well done girls!
One of the things that I like most about Mountain dream softball in the summer is we have a long history of doing tournaments very close to where we live. We play in Scotts Valley, Soquel and Watsonville those are all relatively close. Those tournaments are the typical set that we play each summer, teams have the freedom to elect to play more than that and choose where they want to go. Those decisions are usually made collectively by the group and they could be in a very fun destination if everyone’s interested, for example we had a tournament in Tahoe this year on Father’s Day weekend. It was a mini vacation we got to play ball, mess around at the lake, it was a great time, we all really felt close after that trip. We played in 5 tournaments this summer. We also also hosted two friendlies here at the middle school. These are games that are essentially practice scrimmages that coaches can use to tune things up and give players time to play in spots that they do not normally play, we try to make these fun and light hearted. It’s an easy sell to ask a coach from out of the area to swing by, play a few games here and they can then head off to the Beach Boardwalk and do some team building, this year we had two double headers with teams from Hollister and Sunnyvale.
We started our 2018 summer season playing in the Tony Sanchez Invitational that’s a P.A.L. sponsored tournament over in Santa Clara. It was a great way to get the kinks worked out before our tournament in Scotts Valley. We played teams from Palo Alto, Branham Hills and Santa Clara. For those that may not know we typically we play 3 games on Saturday, that’s called pool play. How you play in the Saturday pool play determines how you’re seeded going into Sunday. Sunday is typically a single-elimination day meaning you play until you win and when you lose you go home. We are all guaranteed four games the three on Saturday and at least the one on Sunday and ideally you play two to three games on Sunday and win the championship!. We bring easy ups and picnic food and chairs and essentially day camp. It’s actually quite fun and it’s a great way for the players and parents to bond. The three games sounds like a lot in one day but the game duration is usually 70-80 minutes, we like to do cardio when we practice to get our players conditioned, we make it fun, if it’s not fun what’s the point right? We tied for third place in this tournament.
Our second tournament was in Scotts Valley, the Alvin Scarborough Classic. We had a great time at this tournament. We played teams from Hollister, Soquel, and our neighbors from Scotts Valley. The nice thing about this tournament as we got to play our first game on Friday so we only had to play two games Saturday so it was really easy. The best part of this tournament was watching our 14U sisters win first place!
Our third tournament was the Tahoe tournament located at Incline Village on Lake Tahoe’s north shore. I mentioned above this was a fantastic weekend with some great family, very good memories. We left super early on Friday, beat all the traffic and had a nice first day. We ended up staying Sunday night and left Monday. Incline Village is beautiful. We played teams from Santa Clara, Yreka, and Sacramento. We got a good chuckle seeing the Santa Clara team again, going all that way to play Santa Clara cracked us all up. We ended up taking second at this tournament!
Our 4th tournament is called Blast by the Bay its located in Soquel at Anna Jean Cummings Park. We had a Friday night game which made for a very easy Saturday we played teams from Scotts Valley and once again we played…. The Santa Clara Sparks…… we got to know them pretty well, they’re really good people. The best part of this tournament was watching our 10U team take first place! It was very emotional and I get goose bumps now as I write this thinking about it. I recorded video of the fans as the last out was recorded, CLASSIC!!
Our last and 5th tournament was in Watsonville, The Strawberry Jam, we always enjoy ourselves when we go down there, it’s such a great format. We made the gold bracket on Sunday and ended up placing third which was something I was very proud of because they had three brackets, gold, silver, bronze.
When the Mt Dream committee asked me to write up a quick recap for the summer I realized that I don’t pay a lot of attention to the wins, losses, stats and things like that. I had to go back and find old emails to remember what place we came in etc. don’t get me wrong, I take this very seriously but I don’t gauge our success on wins and losses, I base it whether or not our players improved and had fun doing so. I good friend of mine taught me that philosophy and I adopted it.
It’s all about the experience and having fun. It’s important that families, parents, players, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts, everybody, wants to do this again and that’s easy to do if you take it from the right approach.
Give it a try next summer it’s a lot of fun. Don’t just take my word, here are a few words from the family members…
“There were a lot of great moments. I think Tahoe was most memorable for me. The girls played so well together and really seemed to have a good time.”
“We have a deep appreciation to the entire team for welcoming our daughter to your TEAMILY: not only a mashed up word created by a nerdy mom for TEAM and FAMILY but also a joke that will surely make your teenager roll their eyes but smile at the same time. Huge THANKS for an amazing summer softball experience!”
“We were in Scotts Valley and the 14U team came to watch our game and they all cheered for us and we then went to watch the 10U game and cheered for them, it strengthen our sense of community.”
“It’s such a thrill watching your grandchildren play!”
Coach Todd Rolen
14U Summer Summary
We had a fantastic summer season.
We started out with the Mountain Dreams first ever championship at the Alvin Scarborough Classic tournament in Scotts valley.
We went on to play 40 games during the rest of the season including qualifying for nationals in Oregon
We decided to send our 14U Mountain Dream team to compete in Oregon which we hasn’t happened in over a decade.
Our overall team batting average was .346, including 2 over the fence home runs in Oregon.
Coach Art Anderson