In 2016, a team of Bend North Little Leaguers made it all the way to the Little League World Series. Twelve youngsters were playing baseball on the biggest stage in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
Seven players from that team continued their baseball careers. Four ended up at Mountain View High School and three at Summit.
They aren’t all on the same team anymore, but for many, it’s an end of an era as they are in their senior seasons.
“Just those guys, that whole team is one of the best experiences of my life,” said Julian Mora, a senior at Summit High School. “I think about it a lot still to this day.”
“You were there with your brothers pretty much every day, hanging out with everybody. It was a lot of fun,” said Mountain View High School senior Aaron Platner.
“It felt like a dream,” said Mountain View senior Blaine Causey. “I remember being eight years old watching the little world series being like, it would cool to go there.”
“Williamsport was crazy because it was with all these guys, you know, we just got really close and bonded with each other and I gotta do it with some of my really close buddies and I had a blast,” said Summit senior Joe Shutz. “It’s something that I am going to look back on my whole life and totally remember it.”
“It started out every day just coming and putting in the work, but once kind of got in the games, you kept rolling, I don’t know. It was really fun,” said Zach Reynolds, another Summit senior. “It was a dream.”
“As soon as we got into regionals, we soon realized it was going to get a lot tougher and we had to win certain games, once you are in that moment, you aren’t worried about wins and runs, just playing in that moment,” Declan Corrigan, a Mountain View senior.
The Bend North team lost two games, but won one in that World Series — their final game against Italy, 6-2.
“In the moment, it didn’t really feel like anything because we never experienced that, but looking back at it you really see how crazy it really was,” said Chase Terry of Mountain View.
