Amazing Titans are 17-0
Published 5:00 pm Saturday, June 15, 2002
Powered by a trio of young savants, at least one South Whidbey Little League team will go undefeated this year.
The Minor League Titans — a team of 9-, 10- and 11-year-olds — took their 17th consecutive win Wednesday night behind pitcher Riley Newman, big hitter Travis Kenworthy and pitcher and all-around guy T.J. Fallon.
The story Wednesday was pretty familiar after going an entire season without a loss. Against the Chili Peppers, a South Whidbey team that is second in the standings in the 10-team South and Central island league, the Titans banged out the runs and took over the base paths on their way to an 11-0 four-inning victory.
Used to doing a lot of hitting during the season, the Titans did more running in the game as hits were at a bit of a premium.
Titan coach Mike Swap said the game was generally unexciting, save Newman’s performance in the first inning. The 6-0 pitcher maintained his two-strikeout per-inning average when he fanned the first two Chili Pepper batters, then grabbed a hard liner to the mound to put out the third batter.
In the bottom of the inning, Riley took a walk as the leadoff batter and stole second while the other team wasn’t looking. He later stole home from third to register the Titans’ first run of the day.
This is the kind of play Swap said his team has displayed all year.
From Newman, he’s seen near-perfect pitching and a .785 batting average. Fallon, the team’s winningest pitcher, has put up an 8-0 record with 81 strikeouts through 41 innings, in addition to a .714 average. And Kenworthy, the team’s catcher, is the Titan power hitter. Last week, he singlehandedly salvaged the Titans’ perfect record when he hit a three-run homer against a Coupeville team to bring the team back from a 5-3 disadvantage.
“I just played a really good game,” Kenworthy said.
Other stats prove this is no ordinary team. Though drafted in a regular and random way this spring, the Titans’ 12 players have won eight of their games on the 10-run rule and have a .484 team batting average.
Swap, a fifth-year coach with South Whidbey Little League, said his kids are having a dream season.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.
Riley, who is the team’s Mariner trivia guy in addition to his on-field heroics, said every win the Titans rack up is a group effort.
“It’s really a team thing,” he said.
Other members of the team are Kyle Unke, Tyler Norris, Josh Moody, Julian Hein, Daniel Childers, Wes Christensen, Robert Boenish, Joshua Harris and Nathanael Hagen.
The Titans played their final game of the season Friday after The South Whidbey Record press deadline.
An update on the season finale will appear in Wednesday’s edition of The Record.
