Marble Falls 10U baseball team finishes third at Centex tourney

CAPTION: The Marble Falls 10-and-under all-star team is Hayden Yeary (front row, left), Blake Miller, Landon Finn, Caleb Malm, Joe Lozoya; Brodie Wiginton (middle row, left), Trenton Christian, Keelan McNiel, Marcus Ilseng, Gustavo Delgado, Ash Engler, Bentley Graff; coaches Alex Lozoya (back row, left), Ryan Engler and Eric Graff. Courtesy photos

The Marble Falls 10-and-under all-star team finished the season by placing third at the Centex Division II tournament.

“It was a great group,” head coach Ryan Engler said. “They were a lot of fun. They learned a lot about overcoming things not going your way and you have to push on through.”

The Marble Falls Youth Baseball and Softball Association team, known as the MF Mustangs Gold, began the double-elimination tournament with a 15-11 loss to the TC Torpedoes then defeated the MO Hellcats 15-3, the RR Locos 14-2, the BC Railhawks Navy 8-5 and the LE Toros 8-4 before losing to eventual tournament champion Wimberley Texans Blue 12-1.

On the first day of the tournament, which began at 8 a.m., the Mustangs went 3-1 with a three-game winning streak. The final out of the day occurred at about 8:30 p.m. Then the Mustangs were back on the diamond at 9 a.m. the next day.

“The kids practiced a lot and practiced hard, which was evident by their success on the field,” Engler said. “You can see the success through the scores – pretty cool. In this age group, pitching and catching is important, and we had some good pitchers.”

They included Landen Finn, Brody Wiginton and Keelan McNiel, who also was a catcher along with Ash Engler. Bentley Graff was used as the closer. Trenton Christian went to the mound during the last game because the team was out of pitchers.

“He threw a great game,” Engler said. “He hadn’t pitched at all this season.”

Marcus Ilseng and Gustavo Delgado led the offense.

These Mustangs played in the Marble Falls recreation league. Engler’s team won the league title, which allowed the coaches “to pick the best players from all the other teams and form a team.”

“And that was this team, and so we played in a four-week tournament with a group called Centex,” he said. “So every weekend in June, we had pool play to establish the ranking for the last weekend.”

Marble Falls went 3-6 in pool play leading up to the Centex tournament with two games cancelled because of rain.

“Which was frustrating because we lost a lot of games by one run that we were up in,” Engler said. “It was a little bit frustrating to be 3-6 coming into the last weekend.”

So when the Mustangs put together their winning streak in the final weekend, which reached four in a row, Engler indicated they performed the way he believed they were capable.

The reason Marble Falls finished third in the tournament is because it was the last team to lose twice before the championship game.

Engler said he believes the results of playing last month will help the players in the future.

“They all got better, they all grew,” he said. “We went from (not) winning the first week and in the second week, we won one game and lost three. The third week, we won two games, and the fourth week we went on that four-game winning streak. So they definitely got better. A lot of baseball is learning that you’re going to fail quite often. And so those weeks when we got close and got close and got close and then lost it all made it worth it when we finally got hot and then played really strong.”

CAPTION: The Mustangs with their tournament rings.