The La Crescenta Falcons 10-year-old baseball team made lifelong memories and were very successful in their trip last week to Cooperstown Dreams Park in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The team lived in barracks for a week in the Cooperstown Baseball Village that has 24 professional fields.

During opening ceremonies, the team competed in the around-the-horn competition, involving throws to every base and the outfield and back to home plate.

They completed the competition in 26.44 seconds to take seventh place out of the 97 teams, in front of thousands of fans.

That was the beginning of a very successful trip and the Falcons went on to win their first fourgames of pool play with two mercies, then lost a close one and then the last pool play game to go 4-2 going into the playoffs.

The boys made it to the third round of playoffs, losing 2-0 in the last game, leaving multiple men on base. The boys pitched great, hit the ball hard, but just didn't find the gaps when they needed to in that last playoff game.

Coach Chris Wetherby said all the players played well above their level in every game and in the competitions and that's whatchampions are made of. This is THE elite tournament in the U.S. and to compete you have to be better every day.

That's exactly what these Falcons players did and all the coaches were so proud of their accomplishments.

Much of the pitching came from Kyle Currie, Gonzalo Rios, Chris Reik and closer Joey McClure. These 10-year-old pitchers kept the hitters off balance, hit their locations and shut down some of the best teams in the U.S.

They called upon Andrew Gutierrez to catch multiple games and keep runners from stealing. Cameron Wetherby, Marco Angrisani and Wyatt Ernst were constantly on base and scoring the whole week with Wetherby starting the first game as lead off, and his first at bat, he hit the Green Monster in center field to start the winning streak.

Harrison Pyros pounded the ball to the outfield and the Falcons had big league plays like Alex Hall diving for a catch, just missing, but came up throwing to get the runner trying to stretch it to second.

Greg Stupakis saved two runs in the last playoff game with a running catch, over his left shoulder with an outstretched glove.

Coach Chris said the La Crescenta Falcons 10-year-old team represented its local community like champions with great play and with a lot of class.

"I got to go to Cooperstown with three great coaches, Aldo Angrisani, Jon Currie and Time Ernst," Coach Chris said. "I got to witness the play of 11 future local high school baseball players and I got to enjoy all of that with 11 great families. I'm not sure it gets any better than that!"

Congratulations to the Falcons 10-year-old team.