BY CAYDEN SANDERS
The Hays Hammer hosted their Wild West Festiva tournament at Larks Park and Hays High School baseball field July 1-3. The Hays Hammer 18u, 16u, 15u, and 14u teams, along with Russell, Colby, and the Topeka Senators competed.
The Hammer went on a three-game win streak to start the tournament as the team beat the 15u team 8-0. The 18u team competed against the 16u team for the 3rd place game, as the winning team moved on to the championship game. The 18 and under team started the double-elimination round with a loss to the Topeka Senators.
In the championship game, the Hammer beat the Topeka Senators by the final score of 8-2. For the Hays Hammer, this is their first championship win as an organization at the Wild West Festival baseball tournament, but this isn’t the first time any Hays club has won the game outright.
Before the 2022 summer season and before the Hays Hammer, the local upper-division Hays Eagles played in association with the American Legion Baseball League.
With the times changing and the baseball community adapting the Legion League is a league of the past. As Perfect Game has taken over as the main organization to run tournaments and bring the attraction of new competition, the Hays community needed to change with the times.
According to Nate Meder, president of the Hays Hammer high school division, Legion baseball is not as popular as it once was leading the way for organizations such as the United States Special Sports Association [USSSA] and Perfect game to take over the market.
“So there’s just less and less of those teams out there,” Meder said. “So in order for us to continue to provide opportunities for kids to develop in the game of baseball in the summertime, you’d have to start making alterations moving forward.”
So that is what the community of Hays has done. By making the transition from the Legion team to the Hays Baseball Club. As more and more teams and communities move to clubs and organizations within the baseball community, the branding and team familiarity flourish. The purpose of the baseball community to move to these clubs and organizations is to have kids play with kids their age and keep the teams together throughout their time with the program.
As a whole, the Hays Baseball Club is divided into two groups 7 and under through 14 and under. That division of the club is any kid that is not in high school and is wanting to play traveling baseball that competes in a circuit of baseball, while the 15,16, and 18u are playing in another circuit with a different set of rules designed for the high school game.
“We are a sub umbrella under that is the high school division,” Meder said. “The youth division has its own separate sub-division under there. So we are running completely independent of the 14u through 7u teams as an organization, but we’re all under the same umbrella.”
With the Hammer organization, teams are all housed under one “roof” and the organization of the teams is handled within the umbrella of the Hays Baseball Club.
“What you’re seeing in bigger cities is these organizations or clubs are basically trying to develop all the way through high school. So you get kids involved in the organization at a young age,” Meder said. “When you travel to a tournament people started going, ‘Oh, they’re part of that organization or that club.’ So it made sense because that was already established here in town.”
The goal of the organization is still to give the kids the best opportunity to grow in their baseball careers. For the 18u team, the Hammer just wrapped up a tournament at the Perfect Game Oklahoma Championship in Norman, Oklahoma.
“The one thing we are trying to do is to make sure that we get eight weekends, and always have something special for each team and I think this has been going on for a long time. This weekend, I think is their special weekend,” Meder said. “They should be very, very competitive while they’re there. And it’s hard to get better as an athlete by not playing in good competition. You can’t guarantee who you’re going to play in the tournament. But the competition level at that tournament is going to be high.”