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Congratulations to Pinnacle Piping on repeating as champions by winning the 4th Annual Kevin Regan Memorial Softball Tournament. It’s Pinnacle’s 3rd time winning the tournament in its four year history.
This year the tournament raised $8450 which was all donated to Bridget’s Buddies. Bridget’s Buddies is a local group that raises money to assist the Sweeney Family fight the cancer that 11 year old Bridget Sweeney is battling. To learn more about Bridget’s battle and to follow her fight click on the following link: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/bridgetsweeney/journal/3
This year the tournament got off to a soggy start. We had more teams than ever sign up to play and were forced to start on a Friday night. Most of the games that night finished with no problems, however the 9:30 games weren’t so fortunate. The game on field 2 between Bombsquad and Bad Larry’s needed to be stopped in the middle as the field became a complete mud bog. The game on field 1 was able to be completed, but barely. That game, between Ahelluva Painting and the Icemen, has to be considered the game of the tournament (at least by me - Kevin Hazzard - and I’m writing this). Played with terrible rain and horrible conditions the Icemen beat the Painters in what was surely the biggest upset of the tournament.
After all of the games were finished for the night many players and lot of supporters enjoyed a great party at the Tanner Tavern where we had live music, food, and raffles. This was a new twist on the tournament and helped us gain a lot of momentum to go into the rest of the tournament.
Unfortunately, from there Mother Nature didn’t cooperate. The rains came and they came hard, forcing the postponement of the remainder of the tournament by a week.
This delay caused us three teams and countless players to back out of the tournament due to prior commitments but didn’t put a damper on the tournament as a whole. The teams and the players that returned for the remainder had a great day of softball. Some of the highlights from the day (and my apologies for missing many of them and not knowing some names) included an absolutely sick catch made in the 9:00 AM game by the LCF from Bad Larry’s (you will not see a finer catch); the All Stars putting a whippin’ on Colossus in the "Message Board Grudge Match"; Ahelluva Painting sweeping through the Losers’ Bracket (including exacting some revenge against the Icemen and knocking them out of the tournament) until they had to leave to attend a prior commitment and missing a shot at their 2nd tournament championship; the Gashouse Gorillas laying a 1-hit shutout on the All Stars in the Losers’ bracket finals; and finally Pinnacle Piping taking home the Championship by shutting out the Gorillas in the finals and once again donating the prize money back to the tournament to be donated with all of the money raised!!!
The tournament organizers would like to thank the following teams for taking part in this year’s Tournament: Pinnacle Piping, Gashouse Gorillas, Ahelluva Painting, All Stars, Icemen, Bull McCabe’s, Sandy Pelicans, Colossus, Bombsquad, Bad Larry’s, Diamond Kings, Galvin Law, Team Regan, and Team Verizon. Special thanks also goes to everyone that donated items to be raffled and auctioned - there are so many people and businesses that to name some and not all wouldn’t be fair (I don’t have a full list) but please know that your generosity has gone to a great cause and is eternally appreciated.
We’d also like to thank Woburn Men’s Softball for donating the softballs and paying the light bills for the tournament, the Rec. Department for continuing to allow us to host the tournament at Library Park, and also Snooky and the Parks Department for having the fields in such great shape for us and for dealing with the wreckage we left behind!
Thank you as well to everyone, players, families, friends, and spectators that supported the tournament by buying T-shirts, raffle tickets, auction items, etc.
The support that you have all shown over the years has been amazing and we thank you in particularly for making this the biggest tournament we’ve done yet. We’re already looking forward to next year!!!
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