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Fort Scott team takes second in tough regional tourney
Herald-Tribune
FORT SCOTT -- The Fort Scott Heat, a softball team mostly made up of players entering high school this coming school year, took second place in a USSSA Midwest Regional Class C World Series qualifying tournament at Kansas City, Mo., last weekend.
The Heat qualified for this tournament by winning a regional in Nevada earlier in the year. Fort Scott was one of the smallest towns represented in the tournament, but that didn't seem to bother the players too much.
"Our town has like 8,000 people," Maddi Allen said. "And we played teams from these big towns. The team from Colorado that we played had tryouts."
"We were just put together," Delane Gray, who was named the Most Valuable Pitcher in the tournament, said. "Our team is just us."
The team from Colorado, D.C. Express, was who the Heat played first in the tournament and Fort Scott's team won 4-3. Next, they played a team called Kryptonite and beat them 9-5.
The third game was against a team called Diamond Skills, but the Heat had the skill to beat them 4-3. Next, the Heat beat Nemo Extreme 5-2 and reached the championship game by beating MAA Heat, 7-4.
"It was like we couldn't stop winning," Allen said.
"We even surprised ourselves," Gray added.
D.C. Express also made it to the finals but this time the result was reversed as the Express won the tournament with a 4-3 victory.
Coach Alvin Metcalf, who is also the varsity coach at Fort Scott High School and will be welcoming many of these players into the Tiger program next season, provided some statistics for the players. Allen led the team in batting average with a .600 mark followed by Gray at .455 and Chloe Wallace and Britney Stokes both at .364.
Also on the team were Morgan Robertson, Lakyn Cowan, Riley Brown, Maeci Cosens and Ericah Shoemaker.