FAYETTEVILLE — Chris Wachon woke up at 12 a.m. Tuesday, quickly threw on some clothes and boarded a van with his teammates.
Wachon and the rest of his Team Ontario teammates needed a 16-hour trip — driving to Buffalo, N.Y., and flying to Chicago and Kansas City before taking another roadtrip into Northwest Arkansas — to arrive Tuesday afternoon for this weekend’s Premier Baseball National Sophomore Championship.
Team Ontario, made up of 23 16- and 17-year-olds from the surrounding area of Toronto, have the privilege of being the group that traveled the farthest — about 1,151 miles — for this weekend’s event.
But when it comes to traveling, the group is as experienced as it gets. Throughout the past two months, the team has played in tournaments in Marietta, Ga., Indianapolis, Louisville, Ky., and in Oklahoma.
And the tournament this weekend is their last this summer before school starts in September.
“It’s been a pretty crazy 24 hours,” said Wachon, a left-handed pitcher whose 17th birthday is Friday. “But we finally made it here, we’re all really excited about this tournament and we’re ready to show these teams what Canada baseball is all about.”
Along with the 39 other teams playing in the event, Team Ontario attended a gathering Tuesday night at the Fayetteville Town Center, where they were fed hamburgers while the coaches attended a mandatory meeting.
“We just want to represent Canada,” said 17-year-old pitcher Ryan Forletta. “Most of the time, we’re the only team from Canada. You always want to represent Canada and show that even though we don’t have as much sun during the spring and long cold winters, we still go play because we love the game.”
Team Ontario begins play today at Veterans Park in Rogers against the Kansas City Sluggers at 12:30 p.m. and then the Fort Worth (Texas) Cats Black at 3 p.m.
Peter Anglo, Team Ontario’s manager, said his players began practicing and playing together last fall and have been together ever since. Since high school seasons range from only eight to 10 games because of the cold weather, Team Ontario’s players have spent most of their time together, fine-tuning their skills and learning the intricacies of the game.
Although some fundraisers help lower travel costs for the team, every player is personally responsible for paying about $6,000-7,000 to cover tournaments fees and travel arrangements, Anglo said.
“Some of these kids, when we got them, they were pretty rough around the edges,” Anglo said. “It’s amazing to see how far they’ve grown, how good they’ve become.”
Anglo, who’s been coaching baseball for about 25 years and has brought teams to this event two other times, described his bunch as somewhat two-faced. When they’re pitching well, the offense struggles, and when the offense is can’t be stopped, the pitching struggles.
This weekend, Anglo said the realistic ideal situation for his young club is to go about .500 in its pool games and advance into the top 24.
But he certainly wouldn’t mind seeing his club win the entire tournament.
“We’re a scrappy team, we’ve got a lot of heart,” Anglo said. “Our kids will play hard, they’ll fight to the very end and play fundamental baseball. That’s what we’re all about. We’re here to play our best baseball and represent our country.
“That’s something no other team in this tournament can say, that they’re playing for their country.”