Community support lifts Hagerstown to first Little League World Series win

HAGERSTOWN, Ind. — Four hours after the conclusion of Hagerstown’s game Thursday, team manager Patrick Vinson was finally able to settle down. Well, kind of.

These days, settling down for Vinson means sitting down, and this particular evening, his phone had blown up. He was “exhausted” by 11 p.m., when he did get that chance to take a seat, but he was smiling. And how could he not? His team just won its first game of the Little League World Series (LLWS).

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Vinson had countless missed calls and unread texts waiting for him after Hagerstown’s 8-7 walk-off win over Iowa. Most of them were from back home, and he did his best to respond to every one of them.

“The support from our small town and the surrounding communities has been the absolute best,” Vinson said. “I don’t know if you could have a better small-town community than what we have in Hagerstown. It has been unbelievable, and we so much appreciate it.”

That’s the beauty of success in a small town like Hagerstown, which has a population of just fewer than 1,800. When you do something good — let alone make it to the LLWS — everyone knows about it, and everyone cares about it.

The “Welcome to Hagerstown” sign has a message congratulating the Little Leaguers. There are cups organized in the holes of the high school baseball field’s outfield fence that spell out another message wishing them good luck. Signs and banners are everywhere. Wherever you look, you’ll see something about this Little League all-star team. What you didn’t see in town Thursday, unless you were in the right spot, were people.

From the looks of the quiet, near-empty streets at game time, most Hagerstown residents were in one of two places. Some were in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, cheering on the team in person. The rest had packed the Hagerstown Junior-Senior High School gym to do the same thing from afar.

The school set up a big screen to hold a watch party for the community and even dismissed students early and reversed the bus pickup schedule to get the high schoolers out of the building before the game started.

“It’s a really special time for that group of kids, those coaches and for our community,” Nettle Creek Schools Superintendent Emily Schaeffer said. “I have jokingly said Hagerstown probably isn’t going to get much done today, but at 3, whatever was getting completed is going to shut down, and rightfully so.”

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All summer long, the community has supported this team. There was a sea of purple at every game, which Vinson said made him tear up whenever he looked at the crowd. Now, it’s a sea of orange and blue as Hagerstown represents the Great Lakes region in front of a national audience.

Those colors were out in full force Thursday both in Williamsport and Hagerstown. As the players were introduced on ESPN, all the children cheered from the gym floor, getting louder as each player came across the screen. These kids have all grown up watching the LLWS, and now their friends and family members are in it. As far as the youth of Hagerstown is concerned, those friends and family members are A-list celebrities now.

“The community really gets behind the teams, and the support is just awesome,” Hagerstown High School Athletic Director Scott Snodgrass said. “I don’t think you get that as much in the larger school corporations. You go to football games or baseball games at bigger schools, and the stands are half full. You go to ours, and everything’s packed. It’s really awesome to have a community that supports all the coaches and players all the way down to the lowest age levels.”

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Snodgrass was working concessions when the team initially appeared on screen, but he knew what was happening based on the shivers that went through his body from the roar inside the gym.

Those cheers got louder and louder as the game went on, especially in the first two innings. Kaden Hall struck out the first batter of the game, and Jayke Troutwine singled to start Hagerstown’s turn at bat. Both prompted deafening screams from the crowd. Hit after hit got everyone more and more excited, and before they knew it, Hagerstown had a 7-1 lead.

It’s hard not to root for these kids because they play the game the way it’s supposed to be played. They have fun.

In the regional championship a week prior, the infielders did the Cha Cha Slide together on the pitcher’s mound during a break in the action. Thursday, Vinson came out for a mound visit, and Heath Johnson met him there wearing his glove on his head, which ESPN broadcaster Karl Ravech enjoyed.

“I think that’s the secret ingredient with these guys,” Vinson said. “They’re a bunch of goofballs, they’re clowns and they love the game of baseball. That’s how we’ve let them play. We’ve never tried to change it. They just want to play baseball, and when they’re having fun, that’s when they play their best. We just let it roll.”

Iowa came back to tie the game at 7 in the fourth inning, and it stayed that way until the sixth. With two runners on base, Hall hit a ground ball to the shortstop, who threw the ball away, allowing the winning run to come home.

Fifty-five 12-year-olds played Little League baseball this summer in Hagerstown, and this crop of 13 just won a LLWS game. That’s when the crowd got louder than ever.

“It speaks volumes to the community we live in and the community this school is in,” Schaeffer said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the Little League World Series or a tragedy in the community — our community members rally every single time, and they rally hard … Everybody sort of drops everything and jumps on board to do whatever’s needed to help out, support and celebrate.”

To Schaeffer’s point, Vinson wanted to send a message to the Richmond community, which is still supporting Richmond Police Officer Seara Burton in her recovery from being hit by a gunshot Aug. 10. Vinson said his team prays before every game, and Burton has been in those prayers for the last week.

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“We’re here having a blast and the time of our lives, and I know back home in Richmond, it’s not so much that with Officer Burton,” Vinson said. “I just want to let everybody know that our hearts are heavy here. Even though we’re having a blast, I want everyone to know that we are being prayer warriors for her, a full recovery and her family.”

Hagerstown’s win moves the Tigers on to quarterfinals of the United States side of the bracket Monday, Aug. 22, where they will play the winner of the teams from the Southeast and Mountain regions.

Zach Piatt reports on sports and education for The Palladium-Item. Contact him at zpiatt@gannett.com or on Twitter @zachpiatt13.

This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Community supports Hagerstown to Little League World Series 2022 win