The 30th Annual Dudley Budweiser Classic started on Friday evening with a nice “4 The Fallen” flag ceremony honoring a fallen soldier as well as veterans from America’s major wars. The usual Conference Friday night and Saturday morning upsets never occurred as the favored teams marched through the lighter than normal competition from the 10 Conference and 32 teams that were in the tournament.
The biggest story of the Dudley is there was no real Cinderella team. For the first time in 2012, the top 6 teams in the tournament were the last 6 teams playing on Saturday evening. The winner’s championship was Resmondo and Laservision who were the top 2 seeds. Resmondo jumped on Laservision and won easily 32-17 as Laservision switched pitchers back and forth in an effort to kill Resmondos offensive onslaught. In the final losers games Team Combat held off Team Demarini and Nordkap/Desert Falls escaped with a 44-42 “game of the week” win over R&M Metals. A game that featured a hard hitting middle war.
On Sunday morning Nordkap/Desert Falls knocked off Team Combat 50-46 in a 2 hour slugfest and then ran through a visually disheartened (and banged up) Laservision with a huge first inning and won 34-13. Then in the championship Resmondo put up 8 runs in the top of the first against Nordkap but Nordkap came back to take a brief 9-8 lead before Resmondo opened up the offense and nearly “flip flopped” Nordkap before winning 38-22.
Resmondo won all 6 of their games by the run rule and truly looked like the dominating team of years past. Everyone in the starting lineup pitched in and Tim Howard led the way and was picked as MVP. The game ended just as a rain storm came in, so there was no awards ceremony or team pictures taken.
Bats were tested on Friday, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday. Conference umpires mixed with a solid local umpiring crew at the main diamonds. Crowds were down some because of the rain and early winner’s bracket championship (5 PM) but the 30th Dudley did have some heavyweight battles from 3:30 PM on Saturday until the finish.
About USSSA:
The United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA), headquartered in Osceola County, Florida, USSSA is the World’s Largest Multi-sport Athletic Organization. Founded in 1968, USSSA has grown to over 3.7 million participants, competing in 13 nationally sanctioned sports including Baseball, Fastpitch, Slow Pitch, Karate, Basketball, Soccer and more! For more information on USSSA and to register your team visit USSSA.com. Also be sure to visit USSSAToday.com for the latest USSSA News!
