BEVERLY — Ridge-Beverly's 10-year-old All-Star team finished a storied season Tuesday by placing fourth in the Illinois State Little League Tournament.
The team of 13 players from Beverly lost 10-0 in five innings to Bradley-Bourbonnais in the tournament held at Riverside Park in Moline, Ill.
"We got them earlier in the year, but they got us when it counted," said coach Tim Harrigan, who recalled his team defeating the same Bradley-Bourbonnais earlier in a Memorial Day tournament.
Still, Ridge-Beverly placed better than any other 10-year-old team from Chicago. Besides Bradley-Bourbonnais, the remaining teams in the tournament include undefeated Hinsdale and Streator.
"We just lived it up and had a great time," Harrigan said.
Little League players at age 10 do not compete beyond the state tournament, Harrigan said. The televised Little League World Series is strictly for 12-year-olds, he said.
Ridge-Beverly defeated Kennedy Park to advance to the sub-state tournament. There, they placed first, giving them a No. 1 seed headed to Moline, Harrigan said.
Prior to leaving for the state tournament, players from Ridge-Beverly's state champion team from 1999 visited with the 10-year-olds to share their experiences.
Ridge-Beverly lost the opening day of the double-elimination tournament 12-1 to the TriCities team. They then dropped down to the lower bracket and won back-to-back games before falling to Bradley-Bourbonnais.
That said, Harrigan is convinced that the players — all headed into fifth grade in the fall — will likely remember spending time at the hotel pool with their friends, siblings and parents far more than anything that happened on the field.
"I could go downstairs and see some of them and ask, 'What was the score yesterday?'" Harrigan said. "'We don't know,' they'd say."
The players on the fouth-place team included: Frankie Bilecki, Cale Cosme, Timmy Harrigan, Jake Lawler, Quinn Looney, J.J. McNicholas, Mike O’Keefe, Jack Perry, Tommy Sloyan, Luke Spatz, Sean Sullivan, Ethan Tucker and Owen Winters.
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