NSW representative baseball players Spencer Williams and Will McGregor have much to celebrate.
The pair are just back from the 2018 Thanksgiving Turkey Tournament in Singapore, where their squad finished undefeated.
During the regular season, the Hawkesbury-based 14-year-olds play for the Blacktown Workers Under 17/1’s Red team.
The representative team they toured with was an Under 14’s side made up of players from across the Sydney region and one from Coffs Harbour.
“We’d never gotten to play with anyone else in the team before … but we liked all of them … no one had egos,” said Will.
They were selected for the squad off the back of their performances earlier in the year at an MLB Showcase held in July.
They were tested in their general agility, skills, speed and teamwork.
Will plays pitcher, shortstop and third base, but was selected to play in the outfield for the tournament.
Spencer prefers shortstop and outfield.
The trip was the first time that Baseball NSW had sent a team to compete at an international tournament.
On day one the side faced teams from Bangkok and Indonesia, winning 8-0 and 12-0 respectively.
The next day they faced a Singapore-American school side, defeating them 7-1.
On day three the NSW boys came up against a Japanese outfit, the BCS Slugger, winning 12-1.
After this match, they advanced to contest a semi final against Bangkok, which they comfortably went on to win 18-3.
The last day of competition saw the NSW Blues face a Philippines squad in the final.
Again they came away with the win, scoring 12-4 and taking out the championship undefeated.
Perhaps most impressive, was the fact that the side only conceded eight runs across its six games.
“We expected to lose a few games, but when we went through undefeated It was good,” said Will.
Both boys said that think they played well but could have done better.
They say they each have plenty of room to improve their respective games.
They said they also enjoyed the trip for learning more about the game.
“We were playing more American baseball, which was good, much faster … so we learnt a lot from our coaches there,” said Spencer.
The NSW coaches spread out the pitching well which meant the team didn’t reach the daily restrictions put on pitchers during the tournament.
Other teams failed to do this, meaning they weren’t at full strength when they came up against NSW.
“I really find it fun because you get to play against better people so you learn a lot and get better yourself,” Spencer said.
In the month leading up to the trip the team trained quite extensively.
“We trained once a week for around three to four hours in the monthly leading up to it and had a two day training camp a few months ago that we all went to,” said Will.
“It was a lot of fun ... we’ll probably try out for the NSW under 16’s team,” said Spencer.
“And probably the Roos [Australian squad] as well,” added Will.