The summer All Star season came to a close on Monday afternoon for the Turlock American Little League 10-year-olds after competing in the Nor Cal All Star Tournament from Palo Alto Little League’s Little Sunkin’ Diamond.

Turlock kicked off tournament play on Saturday, then following their shutout loss, were bumped into the elimination bracket where they fell by 10 runs in Monday’s contest.

“I honestly didn’t know what to expect,” said head coach Andy Walker.

These were words that helped motivate the group into winning a District and then a Section Championship as just 10-year-olds.

The team was coming off back-to-back shutouts over Tracy American in the Section 6 final. They shutout Tracy American, 16-0 then followed up with a 13-0 win, notching 29 runs in a two-game span. They scored 37 runs in their final three Section games.

This time, however, they were part of the final seven—all Section champions in their respectful region.

“I kept preaching to the boys to work hard and do what they do,” said Walker.  “You always have a shot, but the most important thing was the development and growth and in a couple weeks, their growth and how they gelled together was fun to watch. Pretty cool thing as well…in early June there were over 300 teams and now it is the final seven, so to be in final seven out of over 300 teams, that is remarkable in itself.”

The Turlock Americans kicked off with a first round loss to Sunnyvale, 11-0, on Saturday that dropped them into a one-or-done scenario.

They then fell to Porterville on Monday in an elimination contest, 14-4, ending their season.

“They have a lot to be proud of and fun to be a part of, the progress they made individually was a success. I think we are lucky to be around good kids, good families and obviously good baseball in this community,” said Walker.

Turlock was one of seven teams in the Nor Cal All-Star Tournament—the best of the best.

“I think when you get to that level you are playing the best of the best,” said Walker. “The level was really high, some real polished teams, and ultimately we had to play really good baseball and things just didn’t go our way, we would have had to play pretty solid baseball every single inning and we just fell short but those are some real talented teams playing at this level, pretty cool that they got there.”