The latest Wellesley, Mass., sports highlights:
U12 softball boasts banner tourney season
It was practically automatic that if the Wellesley U12 softball team played in a tournament in recent months, it made the championship game.
It did that four times, and won titles twice, notching 25 wins and scoring 282 runs over 53-plus innings (the title game wasn’t played in one tournament due to rain). The team won both the Memorial Day weekend tournament in Franklin (topping Billerica in the final) and the Hopedale tournament two weeks later (defeating Milford).
Strong pitching (200-plus strikeouts during the tournaments), diving catches, and home runs all contributed to the success.
Team members: Abby B; Ari C; Brooklyn B; Clara C; Elise B; Izzy Y; Kaitlyn B; Kate R; Katherine O; Lorelei K; Marie L; Maya L; Miriam D; Paige G; Reagan H; Violet S-G.
The coaches: Keliann Kirby (Head Coach); Chris Baldwin; Luke DelVecchio; Ron Cantelli; Richard Lee; John Goss.
The team’s success might not be surprising given the upsurge in softball participation in town in the wake of the Lee and Diane Warren softball field renovations.
“The past three years have seen the highest participation in girls’ softball on record, up approximately one-third since before the renovations,” says Pete Serreze, head of the girls’ softball program for Wellesley Youth Baseball and Softball. “The increase also coincided with the pandemic and its aftermath when families were looking for a healthy outdoor activity for their kids.”
The bigger numbers have also allowed the program to focus more on skills development, one of its key objectives.
“With greater resources, we have ramped up our spending on professional instruction to supplement the parent volunteer coaching,” Serreze says. “And the higher numbers have allowed us to raise, for the first time, select tournament teams to practice together during the winter and represent Wellesley in some late spring/early summer tournaments.”
A 10U tournament team was launched this year with promising results, and a second team is planned for next season. A 14U team is also in the works.
While the tournament season was a success, Serreze says the spring recreational programs are the organization’s main focus.
“This year, for the first time in recent memory (probably 10 years), a Wellesley team won the Senior League (a local league comprised of recreational teams for 6th-8th graders from Needham, Wayland, Weston and Wellesley),” Serreze says.
Uniforms have been greatly upgraded, with jerseys featuring last names on the backs and of high enough quality that they can be reused season to season until players outgrow them.
Involvement from high school players has also been expanded. “They do a wonderful job leading some of the pitching and general skills clinics, including a new pre-K program, as well as umpiring. There is a ton of enthusiasm at the younger levels (pre-K through 3) —softball is a very social sport, and when making teams we intentionally try to keep girls together with classmates,” Serreze says.
“We are looking to sustain and build on the momentum while remaining faithful to our program’s values,” he adds.
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Michael Li tops 14U tennis field
Congrats to Wellesley’s Michael Li, who this past weekend won the boys 14 and under division of the New England Junior Tennis Championships at Amherst College.
He had been the #3 seed heading into the event, though he knocked off top ranked Joshua Chen for the tournament victory.
Li is a rising 8th grader who attends Roxbury Latin School.
Thorbjornsen gets 2nd at PGA tourney
Newly minted golf pro Michael Thorbjornsen, a 2020 Wellesley High grad, tied for 2nd place in just his third tournament as a pro at the John Deere Classic this past weekend in Illinois.
The recent Stanford University graduate shot 24 under par to finish in a three-way tie between winner Davis Thompson, who at age 25 won his first PGA title and broke the tournament record with his low score of 256.
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