When the season began in May, the Senior Division team from Los Altos & Los Altos Hills Little League didn’t dream big. Members of the new under-16 team surely couldn’t have imagined playing baseball into late July.
“At the start, we didn’t take it so seriously,” said standout pitcher/outfielder Kai MacQuiddy, who helped organize the team. “But as the season progressed, we really had a shot at doing well – and all the guys were doing their best.”
It was almost enough to reach the Little League World Series.
Los Altos made it all the way to the Senior League Baseball West Region Tournament, a weeklong event that determined which team from the nine western states would advance to the World Series in South Carolina. NorCal state champion Los Altos placed third, eliminated by powerhouse Hawaii July 25 in Oakland.
“We put up a great fight,” head coach Dewrell Wesley said of his team, the first in the 71-year history of the local Little League to qualify for the West Region. “I’m very proud of them for coming in third – and in their first year. It was awesome.”
Los Altos started strong, winning its first two games of the double-elimination tourney by a combined 23-3.
After falling to host Oakland 6-0 the third day – Los Altos’ first loss of the season – the local squad rebounded with a 5-2 victory over SoCal state champ North Park of San Diego the following day.
The next afternoon, July 25, Los Altos walloped Washington 11-2 – but the locals had little time to relish the win. That night, Los Altos had to take on defending champion Hawaii, which prevailed 12-2.
“They’re a very competitive team,” Wesley said of Hawaii, which won the West Region the next day. “Unfortunately, we ran out of pitching.”
Three pitchers missed multiple games due to previous commitments. One of them was MacQuiddy, who was at Columbia University last week for a sports management program.
“It was tough,” the rising junior at Los Altos High said of missing the final four games, “but I planned this last year.”
MacQuiddy came up with the idea to start a Seniors team after seeing a squad from another nearby Little League play in the division last summer while umpiring.
“At first, I was joking with the guys – we all used to play travel ball in the summer – that we should play Seniors next year,” MacQuiddy recalled, “and we actually did that.”
Aided by Los Altos Little League president Lori McKinney, MacQuiddy put together a team featuring players from several local high schools (primarily Los Altos, but also Mountain View, Pinewood and Gunn) and asked Wesley to be the coach.
“I said yes, but I knew it would be a lot of commitment,” said Wesley, whose son, Darrion, played on the team.
A longtime coach for Mountain View Little League, Wesley became more impressed with his Los Altos team as the season progressed.
“Once we spent some time together, they committed to go far,” he said. “I knew we had a really good team.”
A team that finished the season 20-2 not only because of its hitting, pitching, fielding and coaching, but also due to something harder to quantify, according to MacQuiddy.
“It takes a lot of talent to make a great team, but chemistry is the most important thing,” the 16-year-old said. “It was a great group of guys who worked well together and jelled. There were definitely points in games when certain people got down, but we always picked each other up.”
Coach Wesley couldn’t have agreed more.
“There was great team camaraderie,” he said. “More than half of them played together in Juniors a few years ago, and they wanted to play with their friends again. They meshed well and played great together.”
Along with MacQuiddy and Darrion Wesley, the roster included Jamie Burton, Weston Carballar, Sly Cash, Quinn Chiochios, Milo Crosby, Charlie Dragoli, Derek Eltherington, Miles Field, Jagger Heath, Mitesh Jain, Kyle McKinney, Gavin Moore and Luke Orrock. The coaching staff comprised Dewrell Wesley and assistants Mike Cash and Dean Dragoli.
