Eastbank Little League punches World Series ticket with Southwest Regional title
Next stop: Williamsport.
For the first time ever, a team from the metro New Orleans area is headed to the Little League World Series after River Ridge-based Eastbank Little League defeated Amarillo, Texas, 6-2 on Wednesday to complete a sweep through the Southwest Regional tournament in Waco, Texas.
The Louisiana state champions broke a 2-all tie with a run in the bottom of the fourth, then put the game away with a three-run fifth, keyed by a two-run double off the bat of Gavin Berry.
Marshall Louque scattered four hits and struck out eight in 5 1/3 innings before reaching the pitch maximum. Louque – who won three of the four games in the tournament – turned things over to relief ace Egan Prather, who got the final two outs to set off the celebration.
Eastbank is the eighth team from Louisiana to reach the World Series and the first since Lafayette in 2011. Lafayette (twice), South Lake Charles (four times) and Alexandria (once) are the only Louisiana franchises to reach Williamsport.
The team will return to New Orleans later Wednesday before departing for Williamsport this weekend. Eastbank’s opening game of the Little League World Series will be at 3 p.m. CDT August 16 against the West Regional champions, who will be determined Saturday in Bakersfield, California.
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Lenny Vangilder
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Lenny was involved in college athletics starting in the early 1980s, when he began working Tulane University sporting events while still attending Archbishop Rummel High School. He continued that relationship as a student at Loyola University, where he graduated in 1987. For the next 11 years, Vangilder worked in the sports information offices at Southwestern Louisiana (now UL-Lafayette) and Tulane;…
