The Ripken Experience: Pigeon Forge 2026

We had a week in Pigeon Forge for Evan's last baseball tournament of the season.  Our week at Ripken was called "Leconte" and had 12 13U teams from Florida, Delaware, Texas, Michigan, Illinois, and more states.  We left on a Saturday and the events kicked off on Sunday morning with the opening ceremony and skills competition.  They did a turn two, outfield relay, homerun derby, and mom's homerun derby.  Evan got to participate in the outfield relay.  He should have been in the outfield, but they put him at 3rd base.  Our team didn't do that great in the outfield relay, but did relatively well in the other events.  Bernadette did the mom's homerun derby and Rollyn did the kids' homerun derby.  

Monday kicked off games and we had games at noon and 5:30pm.  Our noon game was against a team from Florida called Pentagon.  We won 11-4.  Evan went 1 for 3 with a walk and 2 RBI's.  He pitched one inning as a closer and struck out 1 of 5 batters throwing 21 pitches with 10 of them strikes.  Our second game was against a team from Georgia called EleV8 and rumor has it their short stop is being scouted by the Detroit Tigers.  We lost 17-10.  Evan went 1 for 2 with 1 RBI.  

Tuesday we had games at 8am and 12:30pm.  It was an early start, that's for sure!  We played at different fields, but they were still very nice.  We played Whiteford Bulldogs from Illinois first and won 11-7.  Evan went 2 for 3 with 1 RBI.  We then played Tropics from Florida and lost 13-5.  They were a strong team and took advantage of our weakness with fielding bunts.  Evan went 2 for 3 with 1 RBI.  

Wednesday we had our last pool play game at 8am.  We played Delaware Elite and lost 6-5.  It was a tough loss, because there was a a controversial call when Evan hit a fly-out with two guys on base.  The ump said they both left early and called them all out.  So, essentially...a triple play.  Evan went 0 for 2 at-bat and was hit by a pitch to get on base his second at-bat.  This ended our pool play and had us placed 8 out of 12 teams.  

Our first bracket game was the next morning and we had a weather delay because of rain.  We finally started around 11:30am and played the Weston Eagles and lost 9-5.  Evan went 0 for 3 and was hit by a pitch again to get on base.  That concluded our run at Ripken, our season, and our time with ICE baseball.  Evan and his teammates got a commemorative ring and we did some team photos on the field.  It was a really well-run tournament and a beautiful facility!  I'm glad Evan got to experience it and play some teams from other states.