Tyler's team won gold medals in their league for the regular season going undefeated in league play this year. This week started tournament play. They lost their first game to MetaBank. They would have to play Newel Fonda in the losers bracket in this double elimination tournament. Tyler pitched a great 3 innings and struck out 5 batters in the victory over Newell Fonda. I wonder if the buck a strike motivated him at all :) So now he is $15 richer. Since MetaBank got beat by Paxton's in the winners bracket, Villager and Metabank would meet again in yesterday's game. Tyler was again throwing some heat and struck out the first 3 batters. He struck out 2 more in the second inning before walking one batter who eventually scored making the game 0 to 1 going into the 3rd inning. Tyler did strike out one more before MetaBank was able to put a bat on the ball to score another run making it 2 to 0 in the 3rd. Going into the 4th inning Villager came out swinging, scoring 5 runs in the 4th inning to take the lead in the game. Metabank would score one more run in the 5th but it wasnt enough as Villager got revenge and eliminated Metabank from the tournament. Next game is Thursday at 530p in Aurelia against Paxton's. If Villager beats Paxtons, they will eliminate them from the tournament and face Aurelia in the championship game at 730, however, if Villager wins the first game, they would play on Friday again for the tournament title. So as you can see this week is very busy, after baseball this week, we travel to Jamaica Iowa where Tyler hopes to extend his current point lead in the JR 1 Gas class in kart racing.

Tyler during a practice session down the back stretch.

The day was a bit cloudy and wet, but the track was dry so we unloaded for some practice before racing began. We made no changes from last week. Tyler was a bit off the pace, so we dropped a tooth on the rear gear and went with a 58 gear hoping to get some more speed down the straights. Although we ran some fast laps, I thought we could still get some more speed, so we dropped one more tooth on the rear to a 57 and sent him out again. He ran about 3 tenths slower, then it started to rain and practice was over. For the heat races, I put the 58 gear back on. He lined up to start second, however, pit crew and driver had some miscommunication about the start and we got moved to the back. Tyler passed 2 karts after a few laps, but ran out of laps trying to catch Eric who already had a sizeable lead. Tyler finished second. Tyler started third in the second heat race and made it to second where he finished. After a short rain delay, Tyler would again start on the front row for the feature, next to Eric, who had the pole after winning both heat races. The feature was action packed as Kordell and Tyler were banging on each other bringing out the first caution, both karts were sent to the back. After a good restart, Tyler and Kordell would again meet in the middle of turn 3 and 4, bringing out another caution, again both karts were sent to the rear. On the restart, Tyler got a huge start and passed 3 karts down the front stretch to be leading with 4 to go going into turn 1. Kordell took the lead by getting by Tyler on the back stretch of the same lap. Kordell led the last 3 laps to take the checkered, Tyler would finish second.

Tyler stole second base, here he is getting a good lead before stealing third.

Here is Tyler making it to the "Major's" with Stanton Electric. The major league is made up of 5th and 6th graders. Although he is in 4th grade, Tyler has played 3 games with them. He has done a good job and is learning quite alot about the game. He plays left field and in this league they can lead off base and steal home.

Games 2 days in a row. Tuesday they played the second place team Paxton's Jewelry. Tyler played first base most of the game and played catcher the last inning. They were down 4 to 5 at the top of the last inning, if they didnt score, the game was over. However, they scored 3 runs to go up 7 to 5. Paxton's had one more chance to win. Hunter Schmidt was in at pitcher for the first time in the game. He was throwing pitches right down the pipe, 3 up, 3 down and the game was over, with Tyler's team having another victory. Tyler was asked to play with the Major League (5th and 6th grade team) on Wednesday night. He will join the 5th and 6th grade team for a 3rd game in 3 days. Since he is subbing on the team, he will have to bat last and play the outfield, but he is very excited.

Tyler was throwing some heat from the mound on Monday night. He struck out out 4 batters in 3 innings. ...(he did hit 2 batters, one on the helmet and one in the back) Keeps them off the plate that way :) Score was tied 2 to 2 after 3 of 5 innings. His team would end up losing 9-3, not with out some controversy regarding some questionable calls. It was later determined after the game that the umpire was using Tournament Rules instead of the League Rules. Fortunately, this game was not a league game, therefore, the team is still undefeated in league play. Their overall record is 7-2, 4-0 in league play.

Here comes the pitch...........

Tyler watching the pitch all the way in the catchers glove. This pitch was just a bit high and was called a ball.

Tyler with his 1st place trophy. He also receives a sticker that says "Jamaica Raceway Feature Winner." This makes 2 stickers on his kart. He will be trying for a 3rd "sticker" on June 24th.

After the race we had to go through post race inspection. Here is a pic of Crew Chief (dad) removing the motor. The other gentleman there is Dwight, he gave us a hand in tech, his son Eric finished second.

Another race day is complete. It was a cold 60 degrees with the wind blowing about 20 MPH. We mounted a new seat, so we were anxious to get out for practice. Our first practice session was not good, Tyler was almost spinning out in every turn and we ran very slow lap times (17.0 +). Made a few changes and sent him out again, we got faster running 15.9 in practice, so we did not touch anything for the heat races. He started on the outside of the front row for the first heat and led every single lap for another heat race win. Started 2nd to last out of 5 karts in the second heat and was already leading coming out of turn 2, he again led every single lap to win the second heat race, which meant he would have his 5th consecutive pole in 5 races at the 1/5th mile asphalt oval. The feature was more of the same, he got out to a huge start and led all 15 laps of the feature. All races in his class were caution free and it was exciting, all the kids did a great job of racing clean. Eric Bridger who has been running some super fast laps this year finished second, with Kordell the current point leader finishing last due to an ill handling kart. Congratulations Tyler on a great run. The cheer crew took several pics of the day and those will be posted soon.

#83 Tyler DeVos welcomes you to his racing site. We've now jumped on the blog bandwagon and will be posting updates to his racing schedule as they come. As fulltime cheer crew (mom) I will be in charge of pictures. Please bare with me as I still am an amateur at photography. Full time pit crew (dad) will be updating you on all the nuts and bolts of racing day.