Leicester Little Sox will be returning to Farnham Park this weekend for their fourth appearance at the UK Little League baseball championships. This will be their largest-ever representation at the tournament, with 17 players selected across three different age-groups.
After becoming the 2018 Coach Pitch u11 UK Little Champions last year, the Little Sox programme has gone from strength to strength with many of our players taking the step up to player-pitch baseball this season, in both the u11 and u13 divisions.
To accommodate a broader spread of ages, Leicester has combined with other clubs in our region to form tournament teams under the banner ‘East of England All Stars’.
Little Sox players make up the majority of each of the three All Star teams as follows:
Under 13 player pitch
Arnav Rai Wyatt Bryson Ben Fox Morgan Richards Seb Humphrey
Under 11 player pitch Jeremy Weiseman Grant Weiseman Reuben Crawshaw Ester Zlocha Connor Young Ben Attwell
Under 11 coach pitch
Alfie Gamble Mia Gamble Rory Hill Anwita Rai Olivia Johnson Ethan Nicholls
Saturday sees the u13 East of England All Stars opening the tournament against London Sports Orange at 9.30am. This division has been based on a double elimination format with further games scheduled on Saturday and possibly Sunday, depending on how results go. The team will be coached by Jason Camelletti of Lakenheath Baseball.
Sunday will host round robin tournaments for each Under 11 division. Little Sox coaches Jason Weiseman and Matt Crawshaw will be heading up the player pitch and coach pitch teams respectively.
Coach Matt said “We are blessed with very talented players across all our age-groups and the dedication of our families, who have to contend with very long travelling distances just to get their kids to playball is second to none."
He added "It's disappointing that the tournament organisers (BaseballSoftballUK) haven’t given much thought to the plight we face with travel times when devising the schedule. Our kids love their baseball so much, so our families are prepared to go the extra mile with very early wake up and very late home times, to ensure we take our rightful place at this tournament, we really appreciate their ongoing dedication and commitment....let’s go Little Sox!”
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