The early hole the Kent Little League Senior All-Star team dug for itself proved to be too much on Sunday afternoon at Bothell High.<\/p>\n
Trying to claw its way out of the loser\u2019s bracket, Kent fell behind Evergreen 8-0 in the third inning and simply didn\u2019t have enough gas left in the tank to come all the way back. Despite a big come back, Kent fell just short en route to being eliminated by Evergreen, 9-7.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was tough,\u201d lamented Kent coach Kevin Vallala. \u201cThe kids never gave up. They kept on fighting and encouraging their teammates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kent won four of its six games in the tournament and brought home a solid third-place finish.<\/p>\n
The loss, however, stung.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s too bad,\u201d Vallala said. \u201cThat\u2019s the hardest part. This was a great group of kids. Winning district and taking third at state \u2026 they have a lot to be proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n
After getting behind 8-0 early, Kent scrapped its way back into the game, getting a pair of two-run doubles, one by DJ Vallala and another by Kevin Clutter.<\/p>\n
In the seventh inning, Kent put its first two runners aboard and managed to plate one, but was unable to come all the way back.<\/p>\n
Falling into the loser\u2019s bracket early last week with a 3-1 first-round loss to Nisqually Basin, however, proved to be the most difficult part of the tournament for Kent to overcome. The loss forced Kent into loser-out games, where it had to win to advance. The Kent stars nearly came all the way back as well, pulling out victories on Monday (10-3 over Snoqualmie Valley North), Wednesday (8-3 over Hazel Dell), Friday (11-1 over Northeast Seattle) and Saturday (5-1 over East Jefferson).<\/p>\n
That momentum ended on Sunday against Evergreen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids competed big time,\u201d Vallala said. \u201cGoing through the loser\u2019s bracket is awfully tough. We would have been in good shape had we been able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The early hole the Kent Little League Senior All-Star team dug for itself proved to be too much on Sunday afternoon at Bothell High. Trying to claw its way out of the loser\u2019s bracket, Kent fell behind Evergreen 8-0 in the third inning and simply didn\u2019t have enough gas left in the tank to come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}