The Troy 6U All-Stars finished district runner-up in the Dixie Youth 6U Sweetees Softball Tournament in Geneva on Monday, earning a spot in the upcoming state tournament. 

The Troy Sweetes went 3-2 in the tournament, with wins over Crenshaw County, Geneva and Eufaula before falling to Dothan twice, including the championship game. 

“I thought they did really well,” 6U head coach Tyson Pugh said. “That’s the first tournament experience for a lot of these girls and I thought they did really well. We started a little slow and a little jittery but overall I think we got better and learned some things about our team.”

The Troy Sweetees are made up of Ramsey Coley, Lennon Henderson, Ellis Ann Farrar, Nora Pugh, Charlotte Wingard, Kate Brown, Emma Arcemont, Mary Raegan Beasley, Harper Mitchell, Brianna McQueen, Emerie Pigott and Blakely Murphy. The coaches are Jeremy Henderson, Tyson Pugh, Blake Coley and Ian Arcemont. 

The Troy Sweetees will head to Montgomery on June 27 to compete in the state tournament. 

“I want to see our hitting improve,” Pugh said. “We struggled a little at the plate. I’d really love to see that improve. We hit the ball hard, I think we were the hardest hitting team at district, we just had too many strikeouts.”

While Pugh wants to see some more consistency at the plate, he was most impressed by his team’s fielding.

“I thought we did really well in the field the longer the tournament went on,” he said. “We played really good defense towards the end. When you talk about 6-year-olds catching fly balls, that’s not really a normal thing. We were able to catch a few fly balls and that was a first for a lot of these girls. We even turned a triple play in the (championship) game. I’m really proud of the way we played defense and I thought that was our strong suit.”

The 12U Ponytails also lost by a score of 3-2 to Greenville in the semifinals of their district tournament, their second loss to Greenville. The elimination means the Ponytails won’t be headed to the state tournament but head coach David Maulden was proud of the way his team competed.

“I think overall our girls played really well,” he said. “We have a really young team, a bunch of 11-year-olds playing in 12U and I thought they played really well against a lot of older teams. They held their own. Things just didn’t go our way in those close games.”
The 12U team is made up of Charlee Maulden, Kayli Brown, Payton Brown, Mary Allan Pennington, Kaylee Calhoun, Maddie Sellers, Hadleigh Bowen, Brooklyn Maddox-Gillis, Molli Kate Johnson, Aubrey Pearison, Charity Rose McClure and Maribeth Stephens. The coaches are David Maulden, Whitney Brown and Kevin Brown.