USSSA Baseball: 10U Kansas Chaos
Iolas newest 10U USSSA travel team, the Kansas Chaos, wrapped up its inaugural season over the weekend after a very promising first year.
The team, under the direction of head coach Jeff White, ended the year with a 36-17 record and were ranked first in Kansas and fourth nationally.
The Chaos is made up of players mostly from Iola with several players from Independence and Nevada, Mo.
USSSA baseball is split into three divisions Single-A, AA and AAA. White entered the team in AA, hopeful it was a good fit.
I would tell the boys in the early stages that I had no clue what kind of team we are, White said. We just have to show up to a couple of tournaments and see how we perform.
The Chaos had medial success in the first half of the season coming in second in a tournament in Bixby, Okla., winning a tournament in Topeka and finishing second in a tournament in Gardner.
But with that success came growing pains. There were multiple tournaments where the team didnt make it out of the first round of bracket play.
The way I saw it, we were a decent, middle of the road AA team, White said. Then the month of June came.
In a big tournament in Lenexa, the team dropped its first two pool games in close, heartbreaking fashion one-run losses each occurring in the bottom of the sixth inning. The team was kicked down to the four-team C bracket.
For the rest of the tournament, however, they won every game and never looked back.
From there they went to Manhattan for the Bite out of the Little Apple tournament and won it, going 4-0. After that, they won the Battle at the Fort tournament in Fort Scott.
The team then traveled to their state tournament where they won four more games to move their win streak to 13-in-a-row before losing to the WBC Brewers out of Wichita in a back-and-forth 6-5 affair.
The Brewers went on to win the state championship and the Chaos finished fifth.
Fortified by that success, they decided to play in the Midwest World Series hosted in Liberty, Mo., where they went 6-2 beating teams from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
The Kansas team they beat was ranked third in the nation at the time. Their two losses were by a 33-win team from Springfield, Mo,. that they later beat in the semifinals of the tournament before losing to a team from Lees Summit, Mo., in the championship.
