Las Vegas: Kickball!

Two weeks ago, Dale's kickball team (Team Mandrake X) competed in the World Adult Kickball Association's Founder's Cup tournament in Las Vegas, NV. Every WAKA team in the nation that finished in either first or second place in their division or won the division tournament in the previous year, qualified to compete in the Founder's Cup. Team Mandrake X qualified by finishing first in their division and winning the division tournament three consecutive seasons. In the four seasons Dale had played for Team Mandrake X, they were undefeated.

The tournament started out with four-team round-robin group play. Team Mandrake X won the first and third games easily (17-0 and 10-5) and lost the second game pretty badly (12-0). That was the first game Team Mandrake X had ever lost, but they took it pretty well. The team they lost to was ranked fourth (out of 72 teams) going into the tournament and ended up placing second in the tournament overall. They were really, really good.

The top two teams in each group advanced to a single-elimination bracket, and Team Mandrake X's first opponent here was a team from the San Francisco Bay area that was actually very good, and this was probably the most exciting of all the games of the day. Kickball rules state that a game will last five innings or the end of the inning after the game reaches forty-five minutes, whichever comes first. At the end of the fifth inning, the teams were tied, six-six! With single-elimination play, a winner has to be declared, so the tie is broken by playing one additional inning, with fewer fielders to make scoring easier.

In the tie-breaker inning, Team Mandrake X was kicking first and scored three runs (one of which was Dale's), making the score 9-6 going into the bottom of the extra inning. The other team scored two runs, bringing the score to 9-8, and had two runners on base in scoring position. Dale (who normally plays outfield) was playing first base and caught a pop fly for the second out, and got the ball back to the pitcher quickly enough that the runners couldn't advance. The next runner bunted toward first, Dale got the ball and tagged the runner out, ending the game with Mandrake winning 9-8 in overtime! I was keeping score for them and my heart was pounding with excitement.

That game lasted a long time so we gathered spectators as other games ended and word went around that an exciting game was happening on field 1, so there were a lot of people around to witness our spectacular victory. The next game started soon after that one ended, and this time we were playing the #1 ranked team in the nation, a group from Maine that had won their pool-play games 12-0, 11-0, and 2-0. They had an excellent defense, and again the teams were very evenly matched. I'll spare you the play-by-play and jump to the end of the fifth inning. The game was tied 0-0, so we again went into extra innings to determine the winner. We kicked first again, and this time their excellent defense prevented us from scoring. All we had to do was keep the other team from scoring (which we had been able to do in the first five innings), but unfortunately they had a runner who was too quick and made it home. We lost 0-1, but it had been another exciting game!

It had been a great tournament, and although I was a little disappointed that we had been eliminated in the second round of the playoffs, we still had a great day, winning two of our three group play games, winning the first round of the single-elimination bracket in a heart-racing extra inning, and holding the first-ranked team in the nation to zero runs in regular innings. And, as the sun sank below the horizon during our last game, I was secretly glad that we were able to leave the tournament at 6:00 (the final game ended around 2:30am!).