The Lunenburg County Youth Baseball League (LCYBL) Machine Pitch All-Star team did not advance to the World Series this year, but it still left the diamond this summer with a winning record, carrying on a rich legacy of success at this age level for Lunenburg.

“We actually were fortunate enough to coach — my husband and/or I — the last three years in the state tournament with some of these boys,” LCYBL Machine Pitch Manager Lucy Hall said. “… And this is probably the strongest group that we had defensively and just a good group of kids. The parents were awesome to work with. They just were a fine group of boys.”

The LCYBL All-Stars went 3-2 in the recent State Dixie Youth Baseball AA Machine Pitch All-Star Tournament that they hosted at Neblett Field in Victoria.

They were eliminated after they fell 7-6 to the Franklin All-Stars, falling just short of a state title game showdown with the Appomattox All-Stars.

Throughout the tournament, Lunenburg had three key standouts.

“Defensively, the shortstop and second baseman were by far the standout players,” Hall said, referring to Blowers and Chad Mattox, respectively. “Not much went up the middle without them touching it.”

She noted that on offense, “Juan Lara had the most RBIs and hits for the team. Ethan had the highest batting average for the team.”

But Hall added that the entire team simply worked well together.

“One of the things we tried to get them to understand was it takes all 12 of them to make a good team, and they really did believe that,” she said.