The Kirk Hansen Caribou Crusher Classic

The fields at Kelly Park were the main focus for 9U, 10U, and 12U club baseball teams in our region last weekend.  In just its fourth year of existence the Kirk Hansen Caribou Crusher Classic has quickly become a desired tournament to attend for teams from Southeast Idaho and Northern Utah.  The facilities and quality of play are among the best in the region.

Caribou County was represented by three teams in two divisions.  All three teams go by the name of the Caribou Crushers.  Both the 9U and 10U teams competed in the 10U division with the 12U team playing in the 12U division.  The tournament took place over a three day period.  The first two days were pool type play where teams were matched up randomly.  Following those two days the teams were then seeded and placed in a bracket for championship play on Saturday.  The three Crusher teams fared very well in the first two days of play.  Both the 10U and 12U Crushers emerged from pool play unscathed earning each team a number two seed in the brackets.  The 9U Crushers also played very well picking up a pair of wins on Thursday and taking down the 10U team from Bear Lake on Friday.  The 9U team started tournament play with another win this time over the 9U Bear Lake team.  This put the youngest Crushers in the semi-finals.  Meanwhile the 10U Crushers also took care of business in their opening game of the bracket, easily running over the 9U team from Malad.  This also put the 10U Crushers in the semi-finals.  The bad news for Crusher fans was that the two teams were placed on the same side of the bracket meaning they would have to face each other for the right to play in the championship.  It did not take long for the older of the two squads to impose their will on their younger counterparts.  The 10U team quickly jumped out to a 6-1 lead after the first inning.  From there the younger Crushers met the challenge but were never able to overcome the early hole they were put in.  The 9U Crushers were eventually eliminated from the tournament by the 10U Crusher team by a score of 11-3.

With the win the 10U Crushers were in the championship game.  Their opponents in that game were the GC Wolfpack out of Cache Valley Utah.  The Wolfpack were a formidable team that had outscored their opponents 90-9 up to that point in the tournament.  After giving up four runs in the first inning the Crushers got on the board in the second inning but still trailed by three.  Unfortunately that would be as close as the Crushers would get.  The Wolfpack went on to out score the Crushers by twelve runs through the remainder of the game winning 16-1.  The Crushers would have to settle for second place in this year’s tournament.

The 12U Crushers opened up bracket play with a win over the Storm from Clinton Utah.  That win advanced the Crushers to the semi-final game against the Titans out of Cache Valley.  This game was one of the most entertaining games of the whole tournament.  The Titans struck first taking a two run lead in the first inning.  The Titans went on to add one additional run in the second.  The Crushers were finally able to answer back in the bottom of the third inning.  After cutting into the lead with a single RBI a big three run homer gave the Crushers their first lead in the game.  The Titans would regain the lead in the top of the fifth going up by a single run but were quickly matched by the Crushers in the bottom of the inning tying the game up at five runs a piece.  Each team would keep the pace by scoring two more runs in the sixth inning.  The seventh inning is where things went wrong for the Crushers.  The Crushers gave up a whopping twelve runs in the inning and only managed to score a pair of runs in return.  Unfortunately that eliminated the Crushers from contention.  Even with the loss the Crushers had an excellent tournament going 4-1 overall.

Despite all three Crushers teams coming up a little short the tournament was a roaring success and will hopefully continue for years to come.  The tournament organizers were very pleased with the City of Soda Springs and their rec department for all of their hard work to help pull off such a successful event.