Coquitlam-Moody Minor Baseball Association's

15th Annual Labour Day Tournament for 2009 PeeWee players finished on Monday September 1st under sunny skies at Bramble Park in Coquitlam.  The 8-team tournament had two pools of 4 teams including two host teams: Reds and Redsox.  Other teams were Ridge-Meadows, Vancouver, Cloverdale, Burnaby, Ladner, and Surrey.

 Over the past 14 years and again this year the tournament has accomplished its goals of introducing graduating Mosquito players to PeeWee rules for the first time, and allowing returning PeeWee players an opportunity to showcase their skills for the coming 2009 season.

 The host team Coquitlam-Moody "Reds" and Ridge-Meadows finished first in their respective pools and both went on to win hard-fought semi-finals.  The second host team, Redsox, had finished pool play with a 2-1 record for a 3-way tie for first-in-pool, but then was placed 3rd in a tie-break using runs scored and allowed.  The Redsox played in a 9 AM game on Monday against the other pool's 3rd place team Burnaby but fell 4-7 to place 6th overall in the tournament.

 The final between visitors Coquitlam-Moody Reds and home team Ridge-Meadows started close with a 2-2 tie after 2 innings.  The Ridge-Meadows batters were hitting the ball hard but the Reds defence made some great plays to support their pitchers TJ McCulloch, Brendan Jeon, and Austin MacDonald.  The Reds batters soon took charge and built a 13-3 lead by the middle of the fifth inning.   Ridge-Meadows faced a possible mercy-rule shortened game as they batted in the bottom of the 5th inning.  The Reds closer, MacDonald, yielded singles to the first two batters but his teammates' defence was again effective.  A sharp grounder to the Reds 3rd baseman produced a force-out at 3rd and kept the Ridge-Meadows baserunners farther from a scoring opportunity.  MacDonald then struck out the next batter and easily handled a grounder from the next batter to close off the tournament final with a 13-3 win.

 After the Final these individual awards were presented to selected players in each half of the two-year PeeWee age group:

Top Batter - First-year PeeWee - Ridge Meadows' Brandon Halstrom.

Top Batter - Second-year PeeWee - Ridge Meadows'  Matt Jonsen.

Top Pitcher - First-year PeeWee - Coquitlam-Moody's Brandon Jeon.

Top Pitcher - Second-year PeeWee - Coquitlam-Moody's TJ McCulloch

MVP (or Most-Outstanding) - First-year PeeWee - Ridge-Meadows' Nick Evans

MVP (or Most-Outstanding) - Second-year PeeWee - Ridge-Meadows' Matt Whielden.

Additional recognition to the second Coquitlam-Moody team's players goes to their leading batters Jayden White, Derian White, Reilly Peters, and Brendan Sinclaire.  From the tourney champs "Reds" their players who just missed in some of the individual award categories were Austin White (pitching) and Evan Bannister (batting).