HWL Tournament Team Stick Out Roster Rollercoaster

The HWL's jersey design for the tournament

The 2013 Regular Season went very well from beginning to end but the same cannot be said for the road to Columbus for players that will be participating in the National Wiffleball League Association Tournament this weekend in Columbus, OH. This is the first time the league has been represented in the tournament and the original roster included Josh Hager, James Clagg, Randy Steele, Ryan Briers, Josh Smith, & Greg Sowards (Manager). Hager and Briers have since dropped out for reasons that are not really legitimate enough to be deemed worthy of explanation. The roster of the team has fallen to four players and will most likely make the weekend a little more challenging for the team. Smith and Sowards were originally in the background but will have to be much more involved than originally intended.

The team has not practiced together in a couple weeks so what have the players been up to and how have they been preparing? Greg Sowards and Josh Smith have been practicing extensively for the past couple of weeks whenever they can get together. Smith has been working on his pitching on his own for the past few weeks and has made progress on rediscovering his accuracy. Sowards has been working on his hitting and adjusting to the yellow bat. Randy Steele used the yellow bat for much of the season and did quite well. James Clagg helped the commissioner with some bat research earlier this year and we discovered that it really makes no difference which bat you use (READ that article). The HWL Maroon $quad is an odd name for the team considering two of the franchises players bailed this week and two players originally not on that team will be filling in the gaps. It's still a guaranteed good time and hopefully the beginning of an annual tradition for our league to be involved in the NWLA Tournament.