The American Legion Post 70 17U Maroon team finished its 2015 summer season losing in the Alabama State Tournament over this past weekend.

Hosting the State Tournament meant that Post 70 automatically had their ticket punched to the tournament, but that didn’t stop head coach Nick Collins and Post 70 from going out and winning the tournament after losing in the first round in a double-elimination tournament.

After falling to Florence in round one of the state tournament, Post 70 bounced back in a must-win round two to survive and advance into the weekend.

Troy fell to Wilson over the weekend 5-4 to end their season.

A common theme through out the tournament for Post 70 was not capitalizing of opportunities when they presented themselves.

“It was really disappointing I thought we had a real good chance on winning the tournament,” Collins said. “We just didn’t come out and play like I thought we would. We didn’t’ come out and hit the ball like we have been throughout the summer.

Pitching was up to par during the entire summer and the tournament, and it really kept Post 70 in many of the games when the offense went silent. However, the errors and lack of offense productivity was too much to make up for.

“During the district and State Tournament our pitching and defense was really good for us,” Collins said. “We just made too many uncharacteristic errors, and we didn’t put a lot of pressure on defenses by putting the bat on the ball.”

The elimination from the tournament brings an end to the summer for Post 70 baseball, a summer that saw a lot off success for the team from Troy. Above anything else they were able to come together and continue to learn the game of baseball with players from rival schools.

“The thing I enjoyed watching was all the kids from different schools coming together and really compete with one another against all of our opponents. It was really fun to see,” Collins said. “A lot of the kids grew up over the summer and got a lot better. They learned they could get better and work on the things that they can in in the game of baseball.

Playing with just 12 kids for the majority of the summer forced many of the players for Post 70 to play a multitude of different positions, many of which they had yet to play before.

The summer gave the players the opportunity to finely tune their skills deep in the summer and take it with them when they rejoin their high school team when the baseball season starts next spring.

“It was a lot of fun to watch those kids take ownership with their new roles,” Collins said. “I know a lot of their coaches and I have spoken with many of them and gave them feed back on many of their players. It may give them more of an opportunity to have more playing time, based on them learning new positions and their ability of doing new things.”