KINGMAN — The Kingman Raptors are back home after a trip to Detroit to play in the huge Motor City Baseball Classic Tournament. It was a two win, three loss experience that taught numerous valuable lessons to the players that is expected to help them elevate skills and attitudes for the remainder of this season and beyond.
The Raptors are what is known as a “traveling youth baseball team”. That means, for want of better words, it is a community-wide team with players gathered from all three local high school rosters of Kingman, the Academy, and Lee Williams. With the community business backing, Raptors head coach Steve Padilla said, it made a big difference.
“We were able to then take our whole team to Detroit for this big Motor City Baseball Classic Tournament. From 12U, all the way up to 18U, there were 359 teams in the tournament. And just in our age division, which was 17 to 18 year olds, there were 129 teams.
Padilla and Kingman High School head coach, Chad Baitinger, have both been mindful about giving their players exposure to college and professional talent scouts. Additionally, a trip like this, against this level of competition, helps players to see what it takes to compete at levels outside their immediate environment. Coach Padilla talks about how the team did in Detroit.
“So, every game we competed and came back with three losses, two wins, but it was a good, valuable lesson for these kids to see how those other teams and those kids played for the full seven innings. They didn’t take any innings off. It was high intensity, high volume the whole time. And it was good for them to see that.”
Padilla commented that all the players from Kingman stepped up, doing their best. One of those players was Cash Collins, who played catcher. He talks about what he got out of the tournament.
“I got out of it just the playing at a different competition. In college, I would be playing against those kids, kids from all over. That kind of opened the doors to, like, what I’m competing with to get to college.”
Pitcher-third baseman Codey Padilla, also seemed in awe of the competition the team faced.
“Just going to Detroit felt like playing baseball on a bigger level, lots of competition out there, lots of good competitors, lots of college commits, and people that already played college.”
It was a two win, three loss tournament record back in Detroit this past week for the Raptors baseball team, but an invaluable experience. Hats off to the many local businesses that helped out, sponsoring the trip.
