Aquafina Pitch Hit & Run Sectional - 2011

Indianapolis IN Sectional Competition
Saturday, June 4, 2011

Your Pitch, Hit & Run Sectional Competition will be hosted by:

Play Ball Indiana
Sectional Coordinator – Mike Lennox
Phone – (317) 769-2560 (317) 501-2533
mlennox@playballindiana.org

The competition will be held:

Sat. June 4, 2011 Registration @at 8am, Competition @ 9am
*Registration at Third Base Entrance
Victory Field – Home of the Indianapolis Indians
501 W. Maryland St.
Indianapolis, IN 46225


Reminders:

- Arrive to Sectional site early for registration
- All participants must provide a copy of a valid birth certificate or baptismal record for age verification
- Parent or guardian must sign a registration/waiver form
- All participants will compete in all three elements of the competition with all scores starting at zero
- As a reminder, all girls will use a softball and follow the girls softball division guidelines, and all boys will use a baseball and follow the boys baseball division guidelines
- No metal cleats

Jr. RBI Classic

With the beginning of another baseball season, it is time to announce some great news. During the winter, Major League Baseball invited the RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) Indianapolis program to participate in the 3rd Jr. RBI Baseball Classic this coming summer.

Three years ago MBL started the Jr. RBI program for boys and girls 12 years and under. Since its founding in 1989, RBI had always been exclusively targeted at teenagers. Indianapolis was one of only eight cities invited by MLB out of over 200 cities in the RBI program to enter a team in the Jr. RBI Baseball Classic.

The Jr. RBI Classic will take place during the MLB All-Star festivities in Phoenix, AZ from July 7-12. Our team of 11-12 year-old boys will play seven games, participate in the All-Star events, see the Futures Game, and shag balls during the MLB Home Run Derby. This is not an all-star type tournament, so RBI Indianapolis will send a deserving group of inner city youth who have never had an opportunity like this before. This will be a great experience for the boys.

Bob Haney and Eric James will be coaching the team. Major League Baseball will pay for all travel expenses for the Indy team, and will put our boys up in an Arizona State University dormitory.

Aquafina Pitch Hit & Run Sectional - 2010

Aquafina Pitch Hit & Run – Sectional Results 2010 (Central Indiana)

Age 7/8

All-Around Champion Girls: Brooklyn Sandifer – Farmersburg, (566 pts.)
All-Around Champion Boys: Luke Hornung – Fairland, (497 pts.)
Runner-Up Girls: Rylee Mason – Sullivan, (527 pts.)
Runner-Up Boys: Seth Adams – Muncie, (446 pts.)
Second Runner-Up Girls: Reagan Holeman – Sullivan, (469 pts.)
Second Runner-Up Boys: Kyle Cunningham – Cloverdale, (414 pts.)

Age 9/10

All-Around Champion Girls: Gracie Cornett – Dillsboro, (655 pts.)
All-Around Champions Boys: Austin Lushbaugh – Hagerstown, (750 pts.)
Runner-Up Girls: Helen Eaglin – Greencastle, (543 pts.)
Runner-Up Boys: Hunter Cocherell – Indianapolis, (739 pts.)
Second Runner-Up Girls: Hope Tarter – Gaston, (531 pts.)
Second Runner-Up Boys: Grant Vinson – Cambridge City, (699 pts.)

Age 11/12

All-Around Champion Girls: Amanda Melzoni – Dillsboro, (840 pts.)
All-Around Champion Boys: Reece Jensen – Danville, (1033 pts.)
Runner-Up Girls: Kaitlin Page – Clarksville, (764 pts.)
Runner-Up Boys: Chad Thompson – Hagerstown, (878 pts.)
Second Runner-Up Girls: Kelsi Glaze – Muncie, (701 pts.)
Second Runner-Up Boys: Payton Waters – Yorktown, (857 pts.)

Age 13/14

All-Around Champion Girls: Makayla Johnson – Gaston, (697 pts.)
All-Around Champion Boys: Derek Arbuckle (1123 pts.)
Runner-Up Girls: Mariah Berry – Muncie, (589 pts.)
Runner-Up Boys: Austin Armstrong – Rising Sun, (946 pts.)
Second Runner-Up Girls: Lauren Ross – Terre Haute, (409 pts.)
Second Runner-Up Boys: Jordan Brown – New Castle, (899 pts.)

Invasion of the Sycamores

Play Ball Indiana is pleased to announce that Savannah Nave (right) and Meagan McCurdy (left) will be joining our staff for the spring and summer to assist with the RBI summer program. Both young ladies are Indiana State University softball players and sports management majors.

Savannah is a 2005 graduate of Ben Davis where she starred in softball and volleyball. She moved on to Indiana State University, playing softball and being named a scholar athlete of the Missouri Valley Athletic Conference. Savannah graduated from Indiana State in 2009 with a degree in sports management and marketing. She’s been substitute teaching and completed internships for Ben Davis High School and for the Indiana Fever since graduation. In the future she hopes to work on her master’s degree.

Meagan graduated from North Central High School in 2006 and is currently a senior at ISU. In high school Meagan was named to the softball all-state second team twice, the 2005 Marion County player of the year, and was on the North/South All-Star team. She will be graduating from ISU in May with a degree in sports management, and is currently pitching for the ISU softball team where she leads the team in almost every pitching statistic.

Both ladies will be working with young RBI girls both by coaching a team and also assisting with the IPS Champions Camp in June and the RBI Academy in August. In addition they will help run the day-to-day operations of the baseball and softball summer leagues, and helping to coordinate the Aquafina Pitch Hit & Run competition.

Aquafina Pitch Hit & Run Competition

It’s spring….and time for baseball and the Aquafina Pitch Hit & Run competition. Indiana is on a pace to have record participation in 2010. Indiana will be adding a fourth Sectional Round of Play in Ft. Wayne.

Aquafina Pitch Hit & Run is the official skills competition of Major League Baseball for boys and girls ages 7-14. New this year the girls will compete separately in the competition, which features timed base running, pitching accuracy and hitting for distance and accuracy from a batting tee. As of late March about 75 local competitions (over 5000 youth) were scheduled throughout Indiana through the end of May. In late May to early June, the winners from the local competitions will be invited to one of four Sectionals in the state.

Play Ball Indiana serves as the state coordinator for the Aquafina Pitch Hit & Run competition and also coordinates the Indianapolis Sectional, which will be hosted by the Indianapolis Indians at Victory Field on Sat. June 5. The winners from Indianapolis will be eligible to advance to the Regional Team Championship round, which will be hosted by the Chicago Cubs on June 20. The overall top 12 boys and top 12 girls from the 30 Major League Baseball city sites will advance to Anaheim, CA for the Championship Round during the MLB All-Star Break.

For more information on hosting a local competition go to: www.mlb.com/phr
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RBI Institute 2010 - St. Petersburg, FL

Over 200 RBI administrators from around the world gathered in St. Petersburg, FL Mar. 18-21, 2010 to exchange ideas and learn about trends in youth sports. Participants came from as far away as Japan and Germany.

RBI director David James and Tom Brasuell, Major League Baseball vice president of community affairs, facilitated the meeting, which took place at the Hilton Bayside Hotel. Katie Ringel and Kevin Moss are the RBI administrators for MLB.

The training offered a number of presentations on the new Junior RBI program for 5-12 year-olds, the RBI Regional Tournaments and RBI World Series, KPMG sponsorship and educational opportunities, nuts and bolts of RBI league administration, and special presentations from the Partnership for a Drug Free America and the Taylor Hooten Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to explaining the dangers of performance enhancing drugs.

On a more recreational note, all the participants were treated to a welcome reception in the Whitney Bank Club Room of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays, and a spring training game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Baltimore Orioles in Clearwater. Saturday's highlight was a special coaches clinic at Al Lang Field in St. Pete. featuring the Rays coaching staff, Rays medical and athletic training staff, and former big league player Ron LeFlore. Al Lang field used to be the spring training headquarters for the New York Yankees, and it watched as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and other Hall of Fame greats played there many years ago.

Each year Major League Baseball foots the bill for the RBI Institute, which allows for training and the opportunity to meet other RBI professionals that are in the trenches.

Fishers H.S. Baseball Donates Equipment

Many thanks to the Fishers High School Baseball team for conducting an equipment drive for the RBI Indianapolis program. Shoes, gloves, bats, catchers gear, helmets and bags were all donated. Head coach Matthew Cherry sits in the bed of the truck we used to collect the equipment. Thanks for all your help!!