Archive for October 2010
October 21, 2010 | 
Author Highlights of the GriffinSports 2010 March Madness Basketball Tournament
Great Job to all of the teams, coaches, players and fans who made the second annual Griffin Sports March Madness Basketball Tournament a great and exciting tournament!
Thanks to the Trojans who played ten 7th graders and two 8th graders, but showed a competitive spirit and a never give up attitude that will eventually make them a better team “Down the Road”. Keep up the hard work. As the Legendary NC State Head Coach Jim Valvano once said, before he died of cancer, “Never give up, don’t ever give up”.
I also want to thank our two Charter Schools, Apex Academy and New Day Academy, who brought a great deal of excitement and competition to our tournament. I want to applaud both coaches for a job well done!
Great job to the Wrecking Crew who featured as talented an 8th grade team that there is in this area. The Wrecking Crew, who finished 3-1, featured 9 impact players who will certainly make a major impact on their future high school programs (Kenston, Chagrin Falls, and Orange) next year. I would not be surprised if a few of the boys are contributing varsity minutes as freshmen next year.
Lastly, I want to congratulate our tournament champions Team Bethany. Bethany who suffered a double digit loss to the Wrecking Crew earlier in the tournament, who were down by double digits in the second half in the championship game to the talented Wrecking Crew, used clutch three point shooting and tenacious defense down the stretch to force the game into overtime. Then in overtime Team Bethany, who finished runner-up in the Griffin Sports “March Madness” Tournament in 2009 were not to be denied their first Griffin Sports Championship and defeated the Wrecking Crew 48-46 in OT. Great Job!
Click Here to see the GriffinSports March Madness 2010 All Tournament Team
On June 16-18 2011, GriffinSports competed in the State Tournament: Highlights for GriffinSports were:
- Ricky Downer, who had three hits, including a double, two stolen bases, and scored a run.
- Ardell Cloud, who had three hits, including two doubles, and an RBI.
- CJ Griffin, who had four hits, including a double, two walks, a stolen base, scored a run, and an RBI.
- Zach Peters, who had three hits, a walk, and a stolen base. Zach also pitched five innings with three strikeouts.
- Jonathan Griffn, who had two hits and two stolen bases.
- Jacob Cantrell, who had three hits, including a double, two walks, a stolen base, and scored a run. Jake also pitched two innings with one strikeout.
- Kevin Keane, who had two walks, two stolen bases, and scored a run.
- Alex Wojtala, who had a hit and two stolen bases. Alex also pitched five strong inning with three strikeouts, and only allowing two earned runs.
- Griffin Hornyak, who had a hit.
- Anthony Delgado, who had a walk. Anthony also pitched five strong innings against the #1 team in the state, with one strikeout.
- Tommy Foster, who pitched seven innings, with two strikeouts and only allowing two earned runs against the #5 team in the state.
In 2010 The GriffinSports 15U Baseball Team played in the 15u State Tournament. Highlights for GriffinSports were:
- Kevin Keane who hit .600 in the tournament (9-15) including two doubles, scored three runs, four walks, one RBI and one stolen base. Kevin is now second on the team in hitting (.378).Kevin also made a game saving play at second base when he started a doubleplay in the bottom of the seventh inning.
- Ardell Cloudwho leads the team in hitting (.442) and On-Base Percentage (.698)had four hits including a double, three RBIs, five walks including an intentional walk and scored a run. But most amazingly Ardell caught every inning of the entire tournament when he had to battle the 90+ degree temperatures for three days in a row.
- Jacob Cantrell who is second on the team with a (.526) On-base percentage, had four hits, scored two runs, four walks, one stolen base and an RBI.
- CJ Griffin who is third on the team with a (.512) On-Base percentage and second on the team in runs (8) had four hits, three walks, scored five runs, two RBIs and a stolen base. CJ was also the winning pitcher when with one out and the winning run on third base he pitched out of the jam forcing the game into extra innings.
- Zach Peters, who leads the team in ERA (3.50) took a perfect game into the fifth inning in game one, he also had three hits and four RBIs
- Alex Wojtala, who is second on the team in ERA (4.10) and leads the team in strikeouts (16) pitched 10 innings and had six strikeouts. He also had three hits, scored three runs, two walks and an RBI.
- Alejandro Gonzalez Jr. who leads the team in stolen bases (8), and runs scored (10), had two doubles, three stolen bases, scored two runs, two walks and two RBIs
