KEARNS, Utah -- As members of the Kennewick AA Bandits baseball team pulled themselves out of bed very early Thursday morning, rubbed the sleep from their eyes and got ready for a 5 a.m. departure to start a 10-hour bus trip, one thought was pre-eminent in their minds.
"We earned this."
That's the sermon manager Dave Price has preached to his 18 young players, most of whom will be juniors and seniors at Southridge this fall.
They earned a 50-10 record this summer and, remarkably, a 69-11 mark when combined with the Southridge junior varsity season most of them played in the spring.
They earned a AA American Legion state title, the first ever for the Junior Bandits.
And they earned this trip to the Northwest Regional in Kearns, Utah -- on a cushy chartered bus complete with DVD players and air conditioning -- and a chance to represent the state.
"We're going first-class in a charter bus, because they earned it," said Price, whose team opens play against host Kearns at 8:30 a.m. today. "They played hard all summer long. I'm excited for the kids to go, to see their progress and growth. A lot of it is passion, how much they love the game. I've never coached a team where I had to kick them off the field after practice.
The "yard rats," as Price and his assistant coaches have dubbed them, have been known to stay on the practice field for four or five hours at a time.
The regional tournament is the plateau for junior legion teams -- there is no World Series, like with the senior clubs.
This marks the third time in four years a Tri-City team has qualified for regionals. The Richland Knights made it in 2006 and '07.
"Our goal is to try to play well," Price said. "Any goal in the summer is to be better than what you are in the spring, and we did that.
"We just want to go out and have fun, stay loose and go see what happens. The biggest thing we wanted was to represent the state of Washington. That's the biggest thing."
And about that long bus ride, Price said it will be a piece of cake for his kids.
"The strongest thing about these kids is the camaraderie for each other," he said. "They do everything together.
"It's like one big happy family with 18 sons."
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