2 Henrico all-star teams to begin Babe Ruth World Series play

Two all-star baseball teams from Henrico County are beginning play in their respective Babe Ruth World Series tournaments this weekend.

The 13-year-old Glen Allen Youth Athletic Association all-star team is the host team in the Babe Ruth 13-year-old World Series, which began Friday at Henrico’s RF&P Stadium in Glen Allen.

Meanwhile, an hour north, the Lakeside 13-15 year-old all-star team is playing in the 13-15 year-old Babe Ruth World Series in Stafford. It’s the first time any Lakeside team has advanced to a World Series in the organization’s long history.

The 13-year-old Glen Allen team will play pool-play games Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday at 7 p.m. each day, facing each of the four other teams in its five-team bracket. Then teams from each bracket will be seeded according to their pool-play performance and begin the elimination portion of the tournament Aug. 17.

The top team in each bracket will receive a bye to the second round of elimination play, while the fourth-place team from one bracket will play the fifth-place team from the other, and vice versa, and the losers of those two games will be eliminated. The second-place team from one bracket will face the third-place team from the other, and vice versa, but all four teams will play at least one more game. From that point forward, the tournament will be single-elimination, concluding with the 1 p.m. title game Aug. 19.

Glen Allen’s roster includes Frederick Dolan, Ashton Kemp, Lucas Lake, Toney Smith, Bryson Freeman, Luke Perini, Ta’vion Tunstall, Ryan King, Keshav Suresh, Mekhi Bullock, Caleb Connor, Collin Felts, Nathan Sanders, Maxwell Baedke and Alex Boyd. The team is managed by Sean Connor and coached by Carl Smith and Suresh Soundararajan.

During opening ceremonies Aug. 11, Brookland District Supervisor Dan Schmitt announced that RF&P Stadium would serve as the host for the 13-year-old Babe Ruth League World Series again next year.

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The Lakeside team, which won the Virginia state championship last month, will begin the pool play round in its 12-team event Saturday at 8 a.m. with a game against Bridgewater, New Jersey. Then it will face Pitt County/Greenville, North Carolina Aug. 14 at 8:30 p.m., Sylacauga, Alabama Aug. 15 at 1 p.m. and Rapid City, South Dakota Aug. 17 at 1 p.m. before beginning the elimination round.

Two pool play winners will receive byes to the second-round of the winners’ bracket, while the fifth- and sixth-place teams from each pool play division will face off in losers’ bracket games.

The title game is scheduled for 1 p.m. Aug. 20.

Lakeside’s roster includes Grayson Allgood, Jaethan Inman, Dylan Wilson, Nathaniel Maple, Marcus McKenna, Conner Wharton, Yamel Ferguson, Cesar Moreno, Zavion Jackson, Samuel Maxwell, Julio Moreno, Ian Spera, Gabriel Garcia, Briggs Wetherholt and Grayson Hobson. The team is managed by James Inman and coached by Caleb Lindsay, Ryan Murphy and Robert Manley.