The Manhasset Indians 11U baseball team, competing all summer against town and club teams from Nassau County and Queens, finished the regular season with 8 wins, 7 losses and 1 tie, earning themselves the seventh seed in the Nassau County Youth Baseball League (NCYBL) playoffs held Aug. 21, 22 and 23.
In the playoff quarterfinals, the Indians faced the second-seeded Astoria Storm Blue, a team the Indians had beaten twice during the regular season. The lead went back and forth up until the top of the sixth and final inning when, down by one run, Manhasset rallied for two to take the lead and held on for a dramatic 9 to 8 finish.
In the semifinal game, the Indians squared off against the top-seeded Valley Stream Hawks to whom they had lost on two prior occasions. The game started off fairly even until the Hawks took a 3 to 2 lead in the third inning. However, the Indians stormed back with four runs in the top of the fourth inning and added four more runs in the top of the sixth to secure a 10 to 3 win and a spot in the championship game the next morning against the powerful Batting 1000 Seminoles, a club team out of Freeport, LI.
Unfortunately, after the Indians fell behind to the Seminoles in the third inning and with little gas left in the tank, the team couldn’t muster yet another comeback and had to settle for the second-place trophy.
All in all, it was a great season for the Manhasset 11U team and a testament to the hard work the boys put in to compete at a higher level of baseball against some of the better 11U teams on Long Island.
