Sports

Bellmore-Merrick Little League team finishes third in Northeast

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The Lady Rebels, a North Bellmore-North Merrick Little League travel softball team, last month recaptured its crown as New York champion, which the team last held in 2013 and narrowly missed taking last year.

Propelled forward by their years of playing together, the 11- and 12-year-old girls on the team defeated Staten Island’s South Shore squad, 3-1, to win the state tournament on July 18 in upstate Fishkill.

The victory was hard-won: The Lady Rebels played the championship game an hour after winning a 12-inning semifinal game against Monroe-Woodbury, of Orange County, said team parent Kathy Tarantino. Little League games are six innings, so the extra-innings game felt equivalent to a doubleheader. Tarantino, whose daughter, Julie, is a player and whose husband, Luke, is a coach, said it was a scoreless pitchers’ battle for 11 innings before the Lady Rebels knocked in three decisive runs in the 12th.

“It was definitely one of those emotional games where you didn’t know what the outcome was going to be, and the stress level was high on everybody,” Tarantino said. “But the girls just never stopped fighting, and we believed in them.”

To get to the state tournament, the Lady Rebels had to win district and section tournaments following their April-to-June intramural season. The team — comprising seventh- and eighth-grade girls from Grand Avenue Middle School — beat Merrick and Franklin Square in early July to take the local titles.

After Fishkill, the Lady Rebels advanced to the Little League’s East Regional tournament, held from July 25 to 30 in Bristol, Conn. The tournament comprised 10 teams, each representing one state between Maryland and Maine.

The Lady Rebels — now known as New York — lost their first game to Delaware, but the team succeeded in the next three rounds, eliminating reigning champion New Jersey by a run before downing Maryland and Connecticut. On the tournament’s penultimate day, New York lost to Massachusetts, 8-6, ending up tied for third.

It was another impressive postseason run for the girls, who made it to the semifinals in the state tournament last year after winning it the year before, when they also finished third in the Northeast.

The girls’ families made it possible. Not only did they pay all the travel costs, but also every girl had at least one family member rooting for them from the stands at every game, Tarantino said.

Tarantino said that Tom Simone, who has managed the team for five years, deserved much credit. “This year his daughter did not play on the team, and his dedication to these girls … was still there, and the amount of time and expense that he put in just to be there for these girls — there’s no words to ever say how great that was and how appreciated that was.”

One team family will host a pool party later this month to celebrate the season.