Defending champion Ace Trucking finished the season undefeated and entered the tournament as the number one seed, while Ripped Shorts was second, ERBM third, Faith Baptist fourth, New Creation fifth and Wendll’s Pitch Slappers finished the season and the tournament at the bottom.
There were no surprises in the first two rounds of the tournament, which were played at Paintbrush Park on a Wednesday, with the championship games played Saturday last. One of the biggest challenges for teams is to gather enough players to field a team and the challenge continued in the tournament, which left only three teams for Saturday’s games.
“We played a round-robin to determine seeding then played each other again,” Mike Pfister, recreation coordinator said of the championship games. With the defending champions unable to field a team for Saturday’s games, there was more parity with the three remaining teams, so much so, a tiebreaker was needed to determine the final seeding.
After the first round-robin, New Creation defeated ERBM, then ERBM defeated Ripped Shorts and Ripped Shorts defeated New Creation.
Total points scored were used to determine the seeding and only two points separated the three teams. Ripped Shorts scored 54 points, ERBM scored 53 and New Creation scored 52. Ripped shorts earned a bye into the championship game, while ERBM had to defeat New Creation to advance to the title game, which it did. Ripped Shorts avenged their loss and beat ERBM 16-9 to win the championship and bragging rights for the next year.
“It was a super close tournament,” Pfister said.
