The University City Little League Seniors Team made its season recently as it won the California District 32 All-Star Championship.
The team, under the leadership of manager Jim Powell, secured a come-from-behind win over Mira Mesa in the bottom of the last inning, moving the team into California regional competition. This was the first Senior District 32 Championship since 1996 ” a team also managed by Powell ” and the first Seniors Team since 1997.
The UCLL Seniors Team is made up of 14- to 16-year-olds from the community, most of whom have been playing baseball together since first grade.
One of the All-Star players, Christian Pedersen, felt it was time to bring back the Seniors Division. He contacted Scott Alton, UCLL president, who agreed to charter a team if Pedersen could recruit a manager, coach and players. Powell, along with long-time coach and friend Ron Scurr, agreed to share coaching duties. The two were no strangers to titles, having won several together in the 1990s.
“I have coached for 18 years at all Little League levels, and I have never witnessed some of the great plays of this season, including an unassisted triple play by Kazu Kudo, an extra-inning walk-off homerun by Jonathan Fort, and a district championship game down by three runs in the last inning with two outs, bases loaded, and a walk-off double by Guillermo Adame to win the game,” Powell said. “The team showed a lot of character during the season. Our goal was to field a Seniors Team and win a district championship. The players all displayed good sportsmanship, which is a hallmark of Little League.”
“When I started calling people months before the season to see if they would play, my goal was to get a bunch of friends out to play some summer baseball,” Pedersen said. “But once I realized the great talent we had, I just kept saying to myself, ‘We’re going all the way this year.'”
“We were not just 15 kids who met every weekend to play baseball; we were 15 friends who got together to play a game that we have all loved since when we were in T-ball together,” he added. “Becoming division champs was only icing on the cake.”
This year’s All-Star team consisted of Paul Abremnekoff, Guillermo Adame, Kevin Ciucki, Zac Cooper, Thomas Feerick, Jonathan Fort, Ian Fulcher, Kazu Kudo, Chris Munoz, Daniel Nyberg and Pedersen.
Two assistant coaches, Carl Votolato and Blake Richards, helped throughout the season along with three players ” Connor Creagh, Ryan Ramirez and Kevin Weber ” who were out of town during playoffs.