Aug 3, 2016 3 min read

While the Founders League Pony team might receive a lot of attention as it prepares to host and compete in the Pony League World Series that starts Friday, another collection of young, local baseball talent already performed well on the national level this summer.

Twelve Washington Pinto all-stars, ages seven and eight, participated in the first PONY Baseball-sanctioned Pinto National Championships, held last month in Mount Vernon, Ill., finishing as runners-up in the nine-team tournament.

“What impressed me the most is I watched a group of kids, at eight years old, learn to become a baseball team,” manager Josh Falvo said. “They learned how to play as a team, pick each other up, encourage each other (by) themselves.”

Falvo said players continued to do so over the course of the three-day tournament.

“It was an amazing thing for me as a coach, watching that,” he said, “because they’re eight.”

Discussions about whether or not Washington should put a team together for the newly created domestic Pinto division championship began a year ago, toward the end of the season in June.

“We thought we had a talent level to be able to go there and compete,” Falvo said. “So we decided to go for it.”

Coaches chose the 12-player roster by vote at the end of the regular season, choosing from a field of players who had filled out a form during the season declaring their interest to potentially compete on the team.

Once the team was assembled, Washington played in a couple of warmup events to prepare for the Pony East Zone West Region qualification tournament, held during mid-July in Morgantown, W.Va. Washington was second at another in Penn Township. Washington won the Morgantown qualifier, advancing to Illinois.

The success continued at nationals as Washington went undefeated in pool play, with a run differential of plus-32, before defeating the fourth-place team from the other group to advance to the knockout stage.

In the semifinal, Washington trailed West Covina (Calif.) 11-6 entering its last time at bat but scored six runs to win on a walkoff. Garner, (N.C.) ended Washington’s run in the title game with a 10-2 defeat.

“Some of these kids might never get to play on a national level ever (again),” Falvo said. “But at eight years old, they can say they did and they competed and they won many games … stories they’ll be able tell their kids.”

According to Falvo, PONY has decided to continue the Pinto national championships next year, returning to Mt. Vernon. Whether or not Washington will try to make it back hasn’t been decided.

“This was a baptism by fire,” Falvo said. “We were just going for it.”