MILL CREEK — The Mill Creek Little League softball All-Star team took the long road to a state championship.
Next up is a flight to Los Angeles and a bus ride to San Bernardino, where the team made up of girls ages 11-13 will begin play in the Little League Northwest Region Tournament at 6 p.m. Saturday against Oregon (ESPN+).
The Mill Creek team overcame a 9-8, second-round loss in the state tournament, which was held in Federal Way. That led to six straight days of a 50-mile trek to and from Federal Way National Little League Complex, where Creek won six straight loser-out games. The 12 girls, who are “league-age 12” (born prior to Jan. 1, 2013), had to beat Magnolia twice on July 12 to win the tournament. Creek eked out a 4-3 win in nine innings before thumping Magnolia 11-1 in the second game.
“That nine-inning game, it was close for all those nine innings,” said catcher Liliana Delgado, who caught the full game. “It was really nerve-wracking, especially because we were away. We had to come out hot in the last inning.”
After the disappointing loss early in the tournament, the team regrouped and simply decided they weren’t going to lose again.
“I just never thought that it would just happen — that we would lose,” said Penelope Gahan, one of three pitchers who see regular innings. “… We still had a chance.”
That exhilaration of the win quickly turned into scrambling by the coaches and parents, suddenly forced to figure out how to get to California in five days.
Though players’ flights and hotels are covered by Little League International, parents must find their own way to San Bernardino if they can arrange things with work and other family members. The team, which departed for California Thursday morning, also must raise money for things like rental vans to transport the team, along with snacks and beverages for the hot sun of San Bernardino, which features game temperatures in the low-to-mid 90s most summers.
The team is accepting donations for expenses HERE.
For manager Courtney Brown, the worries about how to beat Oregon sat on the back burner. His wife, Shaina, is currently at a tournament in another part of California with son Emmett Brown, a rising junior who plays baseball at Glacier Peak High School. Courtney Brown was concerned about packing all the correct items for the trip.
“My wife hasn’t even come home,” Brown said. “My wife packs bags — she does all the things. So not having her around has been really stressful.” Brown, who is a Strategic Planning Manager for King Country Parks, also had to quickly make work arrangements. He’ll be working some from California during the trip.
“We didn’t really plan ahead,” Brown said. “We don’t talk about anything except the next game.”
That next game suddenly became 1,200 miles away when Creek won state. Dugout coach Joe Sewell is unable to make the trip due to work conflicts, so Shane Caskey will stop in. Brian Bailey will coach first base with Brown directing traffic at third.
Team advocate (team parent) Jamie Miller, meanwhile, had laundry, fundraising and other logistics are the top of mind as the team prepared for the trip.
“We’ve just got the one jersey,” said Miller, whose daughter Anya Miller is a pitcher on the team. “And then just keeping all the girls together, because not all the parents are on the same flight. And the girls, for some of them it’ll be their first time traveling (for softball), and their first time staying in a room with other girls instead of their parents.”
For many years, players stayed in bunk beds in barracks. Due to severe head injuries to a player who fell from a top bunk in Williamsport, Pennsylvania at the 2022 Little League Baseball World Series, event organizers are taking a more cautious approach. Teams for the Northwest Region stay in local hotels, four to a room.
Mill Creek, which will be known as Team Washington going forward, joins the double-elimination tournament with Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Oregon. Most games are shown on ESPN+, with the semifinals and the July 25 championship game scheduled for 2:15 p.m. July 25 on ESPN.
The tournament winner will earn a trip to the Little League World Series, August 3-10 in Greenville, N.C.
Though it’s Brown’s first trip, his niece, Allie Thomsen, knows a thing or two about big games. Thomsen, who was recently named The Herald’s All-Area Softball hitter of the year after a stellar career at Jackson High School, spoke to the Creek girls on Wednesday just prior to their final practice on Washington soil. Thomsen was part of a 2019 Mill Creek team that went to regionals in 2019. Brown’s team will be the fourth Creek team since 2016 to go to San Bernardino. Since the tournament’s inception in 2001, Mill Creek has qualified a state-best six times.
Thomsen, a two-time state champion at Jackson, told the girls there will be stress, but that it will be a fun experience.
While many Little League All-Star softball teams are lucky to have one or two strong pitchers, Brown said he’s got three. That proved beneficial at state. After losing to host Federal Way 9-8 — in part because of some errors during a six-run inning — in the second round, Brown was able to throw a different pitcher against them when the teams faced off again five days later. On July 12, Brown felt comfortable starting a different pitcher in the second game against Magnolia. With pitchers limited to 12 innings per day, Magnolia had to pull its main pitcher after three innings in the second game because she’d pitched the full six innings in the first matchup.
On Wednesday, Brown had not yet decided who would start against Oregon, and said he rarely decides before game day. He has options with different skill sets.
Brown said Gahan throws “straight gas” and has thrown two perfect games during the postseason. Anya Miller’s specialty is a rise ball, while Brown’s daughter, Camryn Brown, features a drop ball pitch that induces weak ground balls to the team’s strong infielders.
While coaching offspring can come with an additional set of rewards and challenges, both Browns said they’ve been able to make it work since the beginning.
“It’s pretty cool,” Camryn said. “I mean, when I was younger, I think I got kind of mad. I thought he was, like, more hard on me.”
Now Camryn is more likely to joke with him about a questionable decision rather than get irritated.
“Some of his calls, I’m like, ‘Why did you do that?’” she said with a laugh. “But, it’s pretty cool besides that.”
Those in-game decisions and big moments in games won’t be of major concern to her dad, however, who has fun at the top of the list for the team, which also features Mia Bailey, Phoebe Banks, Daphnee Calsyn, Reese Caskey, Makenna Love, Molly Joe Sewell, Kaitlyn Stetich and Anna Yoo.
“My expectation, honestly, is (for them to) have a blast, to enjoy themselves,” said Brown, who also serves as vice president of softball for Mill Creek Little League. “They’ve worked so hard. We don’t talk about winning on this team, because Little League isn’t really about winning. It’s about having fun with friends in the community, and the community getting behind one another.
“So I don’t say that we’re going to go down there and win, because I really don’t care. I care about these girls having a blast.”
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