The Atlee Juniors All-Star team took advantage of their strong run through the District V tournament and kept the momentum up through the state championship in Honaker, Virginia this past week. By tremendous tallies of the final scores it was apparent that Atlee rolled steam-rolled over anyone who stood in their path. The team defeated all five of its opponents by an average score of 16-2, outscoring the challengers by a run total of 81-8 in the tournament.

  “We hit the ball extremely well,” said team manager Marty Johnson. “We probably played as well as we could play.”

  However, Johnson felt the final scores did not show how good the competition was that Atlee faced throughout the tournament. “I think the teams were a little better than the scores indicated,” he said. “I think we jumped on a lot of teams early and they didn’t want to waste too much pitching so they put some different kids in.”

  Likewise, getting early leads also helped Atlee rest its best pitchers over the duration of the tournament. “Our ace, I think, only threw 45 pitches down there,” Johnson said. “We were able to save his arm a lot.” Over the five games, Atlee used 10 different pitchers.

  The team now moves on to the Southern Regional Tournament in Cartersville, Georgia beginning August 3. Atlee will be pooled with squads from South Carolina, Alabama and North Carolina. The opposite pool will have teams from Georgia, Florida, West Virginia and Tennessee. The top two from each pool advance to face one another in a single elimination game.

  Atlee is slated to play Alabama in its opening game, but all eyes at the tournament will probably be on Georgia.

  “The team from Georgia is apparently the team that won the whole World Series as 12-year-olds two years ago,” Johnson said. “One of our coaches told me he read an article on where they were trying to put the team back together and try to repeat the whole thing.”

  However, Johnson feels that as long as his players continue to play as a team their horizon is unlimited. “Our goal when we started was to see how far we could go,” he said. “The Region’s going to be very tough but these guys have played in nationals before and done pretty well. So, this is a pretty confident bunch.”

  The winner of the regional will advance directly to the World Series in Michigan starting August 10.

  “Apparently you leave directly from Georgia and the Little League picks up the expenses to fly you to Michigan for the World Series,” Johnson said. At the time he did not know the city in which the national championship games were to be played was Taylor, but he hoped to find out by seeing it on a plane ticket that is handed to him after the regional championship game.