The Unionville Recreation Under-12 baseball team participated in a tournament in Cooperstown, N.Y.
In July of 2021 Unionville Recreation Association had its first team representing the organization in Cooperstown, New York. Practices started in the winter as soon as the team was announced for the team of twelve-year-olds. Led by five coaches, Chris Gebhart, Bob Dobie, Shawn Bonsall, Mike Clancy, and Chris Manning, the team practiced and played through spring and summer, finally making it to Cooperstown All-Star Village in Cooperstown New York.
The team of eleven was one of the few community-based teams out of sixty-five teams battling through the week. The URA 12U team is a true community-based team coming from a program with no more than 250 athletes from 4 years old to 12 years old. The Unionville Eleven have played together through the URA Recreation League and travel baseball for the majority of their lives. They attend school together and spend time together outside of baseball. They are an inseparable bunch who truly love each other and love being around each other, a group of brothers. The eleven young men battled manufactured teams for most of their ten games. Unionville faced many teams who drew in players from over a 100-mile radius, even teams who had only practiced as a unit three or four times after selecting the “best of the best” from their area.
During their time in Cooperstown they played with passion and genuine heart, they displayed camaraderie that was unmatched by other teams they battled. It was a heartwarming and emotional week for the fans who went to Cooperstown and those who watched from home, as they played ten games in four days.
While playing in Cooperstown this team batted all eleven players, while most teams they played against only batted nine. They totaled 18 home runs across seven players and successfully stole 73 bases. Though they struggled in pool play, they played hard during elimination, playing four back-to-back games in one day, as they just weren’t ready for it to end. Out of the sixty-five teams in the tournament, Unionville was one of five teams to win three elimination games.
Thank you to those who sponsored to help the team get to Cooperstown, Primo’s Hoagies of Kennett Square, ServPro of Kennett Square and Oxford, First Pharma, Wolf Disposal.
So proud of this team and how hard they have worked to experience this!