Four Wetumpka youth baseball teams are headed to the USSSA World Series next week.
The Wetumpka 8U Black, 8U Gold, 10U Black, and 10U Gold teams will make the trip to Gulfport, Mississippi, on July 13-17 to compete for the World Series in their respective age groups.
Three of the four teams that are going to the World Series - the 8U Black, 8U Gold and 10U Black teams won the state championships in their age group and division.
The 8U Black won the USSSA Gold Major state championship while the 8U Gold won the Silver Major division.
The 10U Black team won the Silver Minor championship and the 10U Gold team finished 11th of out 32 teams in the Gold Major division.
“I think it’s remarkable for all these kids to be this successful and it makes me extremely happy,” Wetumpka youth league commissioner Matt Fallin said. “Especially in the wake of probably one of the most difficult seasons that our board, me as a commissioner, and our families went through. We went from thinking we weren’t going to be playing again to playing in the World Series. This is really nice.”
The three state champions dominated their respective divisions, with two teams going undefeated during the entire regional and state tournaments.
The 10U Black team lost its first game of the state tournament, but turned around and won four-consecutive games in the heat to claim the championship.
Each of the 8U Black and 8U Gold teams went 6-0 in the state tournament and never surrendered a loss.
Following the state championships now, the teams turn to the World Series and are all doing fundraisers to try and support the trip.
The 10U Black team is doing individual fundraisers, per family. They are doing the calendar fundraiser, with teams donating money to each specific players.
The 8U Black and 8U Gold teams are each using GoFundMe to try and raise money for travel expenses, hotels, uniforms and anything else the teams need. The link to donate is www.gofundme.com/f/wetumpka-gold-8u-baseball-team.
The Wetumpka Youth league is also taking donations from anyone willing to give, and those donations will be split between each of the four teams.
The league is also already giving some funds to each team.
“We had some funds that we are able to help the teams with, but it’s an expensive trip,” Fallin said. “We can’t afford the entire trip, so that’s why we’re doing fundraisers to try and raise some more money for the kids.”
While the baseball team is sending four teams to the World Series, the success of Wetumpka’s youth league does not stop at the one sport.
In softball, the U16 team had an extremely successful season end in the World Series last weekend. The U16 softball team went undefeated all season and won the Pre-Area 1 and Pre-Area 2 championships before winning the regional and state championship.
After the state championship, they were awarded the chance to play in the World Series in Foley and saw their season come to an end there.
