Big Horn Basin Blue Jays focus on improvements

WORLAND - The Big Horn Basin Blue Jays hosted a five-team tournament at Newell Sargent Park over the Father's Day weekend and finished with a 1-2 record.

The Blue Jays, the senior Babe Ruth team, opened the tournament against Gillette's junior varsity team and won by a score of 10-1 with Zade Larkins picking up the W from the mound.

Worland advanced to the next round against Gillette's varsity team, who the Blue Jays lost to earlier in the season by a score of 10-7. The boys, and girl, would hang with Gillette even have a three lead but eventually cold bats and costly errors led to a 9-4 defeat.

Sunday morning the Blue Jays had their chance to rebound by working their way through the loser's bracket and into the championship game. Getting there they needed to take it one game at a time and Newcastle was the first hurdle. Newcastle turned out to be a difficult hurdle, as they were sharp defensively and offensively, while the bats for Worland couldn't muster anything resulting in a 9 -1 loss.

While the weekend didn't go as envisioned Blue Jays coach David Evans talked about the positives from the weekend, "We've yet to play with a full roster, like for this tournament we have nine players, so we've been playing kids in different positions and trying to find what works," said Evans.

"Our goal this season is to improve every time we take the field," said coach Evans, "I told the guys first day out that I'm not worried about our record. What I want to see this team do is improve week to week all the way leading up to the state tournament."

Coach Evans is from Thermopolis and commutes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for practice and games. While the drive does take a shot at the wallet coach Evans doesn't look at it as a burden, "The improvement these kids have made each week is worth the drive. They listen and have the internal fire to be better ball players, and really to credit to their development belongs to them."

With summer jobs and other responsibilities the team has yet to be at full strength and coach Evans has used these absences to bolster the team's depth, "We've been playing kids in different spots trying to get them ready for anything. I've reminded the kids that no one has a sure position and anyone can get beat out. They're learning and adding to their baseball skills and in the long run it's going to help our diversity as a team and just make us better."

With a month left until the state tournament coach Evans recognizes the flaws in his team but has the faith in his team to correct those flaws. "There are things we need to work on but we still have a month to go until state. We're going to keep maximizing our effort and compete every week. Like I said I wanted to see us improving each week and these kids are doing that," Evans said.

The next game for the Blue Jays will be against the Worland junior Babe Ruth team tonight and the they travel to Gillette for a double-header on Saturday.