Dover ready to make a run at consolation championship at Cal Ripken World Series

BRANSON, Missouri - After the Dover Cal Ripken all-star team defeated West Hartford, Connecticut in last year's New England 11-year-old championship, the prize of playing in a World Series had to wait a year.

One year later, Dover arrived at the Cal Ripken 12-year-old World Series last week and started strong with a tournament-opening win over Boonville, Missouri last Friday.

However, four straight pool-play losses, including Tuesday's 7-4 loss to Windsor, California, prevented Dover from advancing out of pool play and playing for a world championship in the 34-team tournament.

Now, it's onto the 20-team, single-elimination consolation bracket.

"It's been an interesting ride," Dover head coach Mike Lynch said. "The anticipation has built for a long time knowing almost a year ago that this was how we were going to cap the 12-year-old season. It was something to look forward to. But also, I think sometimes in random games, it cost them, I don't want to say lack of motivation, but every game didn't matter as much. But now that we're here, we're trying to turn it on and this has been every bit the experience we've hoped it would be when we clinched the berth last year."

Dover goes 1-4 in pool play

Dover, after a 5-4 tournament-opening win, was outscored 35-12 in its four losses.

"The teams here are the best teams we've ever played," Lynch said. "Usually when we're playing in New Hampshire and New England, we're one of the biggest teams. We're one of the smallest ones here, and that's with some big kids on our team. It's been a great experience and I think the kids have learned a lot."

Dover was eliminated from the championship bracket with Monday's 10-1 loss to Flood City, Pennsylvania. On Tuesday, with nothing at stake, Dover found itself tied with Windsor entering the sixth inning. However, Windsor scored three runs in the sixth for the win.

"I was actually super proud of the kid's effort today," Lynch said. "I felt like the first few games we were pretty tight, trying not to make mistakes and in doing so, we were making mistakes. Just from the start (Tuesday), it was a different energy. They played loose and free and battled. We didn't get the outcome we wanted, but I thought it was one of our best performances here so far in terms of how they fought. They didn't quit."

Though it wasn't the outcome that Dover wanted, it doesn't take away from the experience of seeing players and teams from around the country.

"Like all kids do with these tournaments, they look around, they look at the other teams, they size up the competition and it's super cool that the international teams are here," Lynch said. "We got to see the Japan team (on Monday). We saw how they approach the game and the things they do. It's just been a pretty good experience all around."

New challenge lies ahead for Dover

Now, Dover will shift its focus to the consolation bracket, and Lynch said the team is excited to keep going on this journey.

"I told the kids we're onto a new tournament," Lynch said. "We're trying to be the best of the teams that didn't make the championship bracket, and that would mean that we're 15th in the world; that's not a bad consolation prize."

The consolation bracket features 20 teams in a single-elimination bracket style tournament mixing both International and teams from across the United States. Dover is scheduled to face Hot Springs, Arkansas on Wednesday at 2 p.m.

Hot Springs, Arkansas, like Dover, went 1-4 in pool play.

"We haven't had a ton of breaks in this tournament," Lynch said. "We've been hitting line drives right at people. In (Monday) night's game, we hit two balls about as hard as we could right back at the pitcher and he caught both of them, just pure reaction. We hit balls in the gap (Tuesday), and we hit balls right at the first basemen, we haven't had a ton of breaks, so we're putting all of that behind us."

Teams will play one game a day in the consolation bracket, and for Dover to make a deep run, Lynch said it starts with cleaning up some of the little things.

"Maybe we're crazy, but as a coaching staff we believe we're four or five plays in this tournament from being 3-2 or 4-1," Lynch said. "Just little mistakes that we need to clean up, a random costly error here or there. We can clean up those things and we can make a run."

Lynch added, "once we were eliminated (from moving on), we decided we were going to try to set our pitching up for an opportunity to win the (Ironman) bracket," he said. "We threw some kids the last two days who haven't thrown as much and they were great. Now, our big arms are fresh and ready to go. We came here to play as many games as we could and we're set up to try and do that."

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Dover all-stars shift gears at Cal Ripken World Series tournament