Meeker baseball teams win titles­, 11-12 undefeated

MEEKER I Two Meeker youth baseball teams won their age brackets in the season-ending recreation league tournaments last week and one of Meeker’s two 11-12-year-old teams capped off an undefeated season with a championship on their home field. Meeker’s I and II 8-10 teams played in Craig and Meeker II returned with a team title.
“They never really talked about it, they just kept playing baseball and having fun,” head coach Brian Merrifield said of his team’s 12-0 season. “They are a good group of boys that hit the ball well. They would stay at the park all day hitting, because they enjoyed it and I enjoyed it too.”
Merrifield’s team had to play Meeker’s other team in the first round of the tournament and won 9-8, then beat Craig 4 16-3 before facing Craig 3 in the semifinals and won 7-6. Craig 3 came back through the consolation bracket and back to the championship game of the double elimination tournament but would suffer their second loss, for a second time to Meeker.
Meeker’s two 8-10 teams also had to play each other but not until the second round, after Meeker II defeated Craig I 17-8 in the first game, then Meeker I (3-0) in the second round before defeating Craig Rehab Services to advance to the championship game against Craig Carelli’s. Meeker II defeated Carelli’s 3-1 to win the team title.
“Coach (Brett) Steinacher and I emphasized all season for them to play as a team and it was a lot of fun to watch them come together,” coach Jason Hightower said of his team, which finished with a 12-2 record. “We lost our first game of the season, then to Meeker I, 12-14 in two extra innings. Fifty percent of our team was 8-year-olds and everyone ended up contributing at least one big play during the season. We won because our whole team played together as a team.”