DENIS HALEY- LITTLE LEAGUE DISTRICT ADMINISTRATOR

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Episode Transcript

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That's sports on nine to six amin ninety six point nine FM w E
L I. Let's go to thephones and my man Dennis Haley, and

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the comments is he he is theDistrict four administrator a little league baseball softball
and he's been doing this for like, you know, one hundred years,
and he's done a great job.How long have you been involved? Good
morning Dennis? How you doing,pal Hi coach? How are you?

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Let's see I joined Milford International backin nineteen eighty five and over the few
years I met David Tolo who wasthe I joined his staff when he became
the DA. So been on theDistrict four staff for thirty four years and
now been the DA for four justgot re elected for four more. Oh,

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by goodness for you, that's greatnews. I mean it must be
thrilled about that. I mean fourand four more, all right. And
it involves so how many how manytowns? How many little leagues towns you
got? I was trying to namethem yesterday before Orange, Milford, west

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Haven, East Haven, right,North Haven. I don't know the Branford
and new Haven because we have twowe have two leagues in new Haven,
that's right. And again the order, which I finally learned after many years.
Thank you to David Tolo who Iused to always skip the sectionals for

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some reason. I don't know whyI didn't like them, but it goes.
I just didn't what district section uh, and then state tournament after that,
regional, regional and then national.Okay, so let's let's hit some
of the teams, uh, theones I was mentioning this morning on the

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show, and we'll do. Uh. Let's do baseball first. The one
team in our area here doing verywell, won the District four championship the
other night, Orange beating Milford ina great championship game, one to nothing
the final score. And now theystart sectional playing. All right, that's
Monday in Trumble and they and theydraw Fairfield. All that they did,

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Yeah, so that'll that'll be interesting. I mean, that's a great way
to start. I mean, youknow, if you if you play a
really close game or you you win, you have a good shot of playing
in a sectional final three days later. So you know, that's you know,
that's probably part of the key isyou know, can you get you
know, when you go there,you know you're going to face Fairfield and

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the Stanfords generally out of District oneand good baseball programs for many years,
especially Fairfield. So there's Fairfield andthere's Orange. You have and I don't
want to put you on the spotsand the other teams in there. I
didn't mean that. I didn't meanto throw a curR. Now that listen,
that's fine. Uhidding. I'm notsure if it was updated by last

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night or not, but they theydidn't play Madison, Milford, not Milford.
Orange will draw Fairfield first found andthat's still it's Monday night, right
right? Okay, all right,okay, so who is it there?
I'm looking. I'm looking at thestate site right now to see if that
was updated with the District one yet. Uh nope, just has the districts

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listed. So I'm one more paid. I can check one. Don't have
to go crazy. I'm not justflipping around real quick. Uh So in
the Little League baseball I was sookay. So it's Wilton, uh Orange
and Fairfield American, I believe,all right, and the winner of that

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will go on to the state tournament, which, by the way, is
just crazy but happens to being troumbledagain. Yep. All right, so
they don't have to travel far everyonce they once say it's nicely you know
we're going to be playing all right, so we took care. Let's go
to the girls now and the allright, we have one more well,

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we have one more sections starting hereSunday morning in Orange. Oh I'm sorry,
go ahead. We have the eightten sections starting in Orange Sunday morning
at eleven a m. That willbe Milford, Stanford American and Fairfield National
will be the three teams that competein that and uh, you know that'll
get them underway for the right togo to the States. And as you

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know, now if you you knowwhen you're eight ten, if you if
you win this in the first gameSunday morning will be Stamford against Milford,
Okay, and you know, ifyou would not you go to the States.
And if you go to the States, there is now what they call
it invitational there has been for thelast few years for those teams in Canterbury.
I mean, I'm sorry, Yeah, wow, Cranston, Rhode Island

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they go to if they want to, that's invitation. Yeah. Well,
they're supposed to let us know beforeso that we can get permission for the
second place team to go if theydon't. Okay, all right, Well
they didn't have that for a while. Now they've they've got like a little
regional tournament for the eight to ten. How about that? Yeah, getting
bigger and bigger. All right,let's go to the girls. Now,

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let's we'll start with the twelve andunder Little League and the course that's the
road now to Greenville, North Carolina. For many years it was out in
Portland, out there, and thankgoodness, it came back to the East
coast. I'm glad about that.But right now we've got the Milford girls
twelve and under and they're in Theywon the districts, they won the sections.

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Now they're in the state tournament.They lost their first game and now
they've got to and then they won. They beat Colchester. Now they got
to play Madison. Did they playlast night or was it postponed? No,
it was postponed, so that nowthat everything moves to Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday. Now they coach, theytook the weekend off. You don't
want I don't want to be becausewe have a lot of I guess areas

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in our state where travel ball isyou know, still big on the weekends
as opposed to my district where youknow Milford, which is made up of
regular players plus travel ball players fromthree or four different organizations. Those those
players don't play travel ball from midJune to August first, so they can
play Little League All Stars. Sobut they have to they have Madison on

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Monday night, very good Madison team. Uh, and then they if they
win, they have to then beWallingford two days in a row. Very
good program in Wallingford. So yeah, we haven't heard a lot about Wallingford
the last few years, but they'vecome. They've come with this pretty powerful

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team, I guess, so okay, so we'll see what happened. Of
course, the regionals are after thisand now of course in Bristol, Connecticut,
like the boys ending GOSL all right, which then the night and just
you know, the nine to elevenstate champions were Wallingford and softball Wow ending
Milford, ending Milford's three year run, and then UH in the eight tens.

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UH District four continued its run inSection one, but this year it
wasn't Milford. It was the Amityeight ten softball team that won the district
and then won the section and theyopened Monday night in Bristol, Connecticut and
rockwell Field at eight o'clock against Wallingford. Wallingford is uh, obviously must have

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a good year for Wallingford softball.Yeah it is, Yeah, it really
is. Uh. And the twocoaches out there for Linmanhall and San at
the high school, Sarah Well,she's married now, but the Sarah Wayant
I got her maiden name and uh, Stephanie, Uh, Stephanie, I'll

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get it, but her first nameis Stephanie. Anyway, she coaches Liman
Hall and they do great challenge withtheir programs out there. So I'm not
surprised the Wallingford the kids are comingalong. Okay, so we got that,
and so that's the twelve. ButI'll say this, I think we'll
both agree that the Milford girls havea It is a tough road they get

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by this that would have earned theywill have earned it beating a good like
a good Madison team and then havingto beat Wallingford twice. You beat them
twice, you have earned your stripesthere, wouldn't you say? Yeah,
you have? That's what I thought. Okay, Now we go on to
something that's been hosted by your districtfor will now be thirty years this coming

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year, and it's the junior sawtball. That's thirteen fourteen year old girls les
right twelve, twelve to fourteen.Now twelve elves can't play up they know,
is if you're twelve, you cannot play the twelve and under the
little move right up. Actually youcan play both. You can. You

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can do that. You can youcan play for your junior team for your
league, and you can also playfor your twelve year old major team.
Oh my god, So I get. I mean, you know, I
mean trying to you know, tryingto keep the programs growing and building.
But there's a big difference between twelveyear old softball and thirteen fourteen year old

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softball. First of all, thefield is bigger. Yeah no, no,
just the mound. The mound isfarther back, yeah yeah, weather
back mound is yeah, just fortythree and juniors and forty in majors.
But well, but you know whatpart of it is doing that? Are

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the girls doing that? Yeah?We do? Because yeah, because remember
that on December January first, they'retwelve, so that makes them a little
league twelve. And on January second, they turned thirteen, so basically going
into the summer, they're thirteen yearolds. That's where we do get players
that play up all right, sothey you've got this and of course the

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Milford team last year with Maddy Bulland that great team, they ended up
going to the World Series in Kirkland, Washington. And now this Milford team
will begin play this week because theJunior Softball regionals are in Orange, been
there for many years. They werein Orange and they went to West Haven

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and now back in Orange. Andthis is the road to Kirkland, Washington.
Who is the Connecticut representative besides Milford, you know, well know that
this weekend as mayor pack George,when I'm done with you, I get
they head to over to Old Tavernand Orange. And the first game today
will feature Stonington against Plymouth Terryville andthe winner will play Bristol. We were

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supposed to have four teams in statechampionship. Manchester unfortunately had to pull out
a few of their players that theycouldn't make it for the week, so
they had to pull out of thetournament unfortunately. So we will have three
teams in it, and we shouldwe could have a winner as early as
tomorrow afternoon or the if game ison Monday night, and that team,

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that team will stay right here inOrange and will represent Connecticut and Milford will
be the host again. Right,the host team is Milford, right,
and another outstanding team. Looking atthat roster from Milford, Well, they
have the way of They have theirAbbey chorus who pitched the regional in the
World Series last year. She isback, so she will lead the pitching

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staff. Yeah, and the I'mtrying to think of her last name now
and I can't, but the playerwho hit the home run in the championship
game late she is also back.They got they got a good crew coming
back. And we'll get the coachon, the coach chorus on to get

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him on the show. And they'llstart play Thursday. Its opening ceremonies on
Thursday. And this is celebrating thirtyyears. And I believe I was trying
to think last night. I don'tbelieve I was at the first two years
in Orange. I'm trying to rememberI started the year they went to West
Haven almost positive, so I thinkI've been there twenty eight of the will

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be thirty years coming here. Yeah, And I always enjoyed going to West
Tave and it was always great goingdown and then moved back to Orange where
again great softball is played. Andyou know, Dennis, you need a
good staff. It's not just Dennis. Dennis Haley does all the coordinating,
that's everything. But you need helpto do something like this. You got

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some good people, Yes, Ido. I have really good people.
Assistant tournament director is Kyle Stewart.Our umpire chief is Dave to Moscow,
who's you know, they've both beenon the district that with me and going
and going back to Jocelyn Rotolo whenshe was the d A or Jocelyn I'm
sorry, Jocelyn Chang when she wasthe d Yeah, so she you know

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she uh, they were on thestaff with her. Uh. John Cugman
is like a safety officer for theregional and uh, you know, we
have the staff that works the refreshmentsdead which is now called Norma Rene's Cafe.
Uh, and the and the ladiesand the and the ladies and the
guys who are helping them there.You know, they do a great job

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and fortunately for us being an OrangeChris Mall I want to give them a
shout out to Chris Mall and theOrange Brown crew that takes care of all
the fields at Old Tavern and thered fields around town. They are there.
They do a great job. Everygame. In between games they come
out and they re drag the nfield, they re line it, uh,
water it down, try to keepthe dust down a point. But you

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know, it's just it's not it'sit's not just me. It's a lot
of help. And we have youknow, we have umpires that have been
coming here since the late nineties,early two thousands to help with people now
are umpiring. They keep score,they announced, they do you know,
other jobs and stuff. So itworks out really good. And a lot
of them take a week off everyyear to come back here. Uh and

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they some of them, you likeI said, some of them are doing
it twenty to twenty five years,So I mean, and it takes it
takes that many people to do it. You're right now, you're telling me
next year you have these states comeback. They rotate the state championship sites,
but you have a chance to hoststates next year. Yeah, well,

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I think it'll all that'll be decidedwhen the state meeting in September,
because we're considering trying something different.We're you know, we're trying to figure
out how to do it a littlebetter with the states instead of you know,
like this year the twelves are inMansfield. Next year they're in Wilton.
So this year Milford has to travelto Mansfield, which is you know,
you can on you then next thennext year those teams from the upper

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part of the state are going tohave to travel all the way to to
Wilton. So I'm sure, wellthat's well d one is the host,
but generally they use Wilton High rightnow as their main field. So I'm
sure that's a good possibility that that'swhere that's going. So you have a
chance to host what states are you? Well? Could I think we might

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be the eight tens next year softball, I can tell you in corporate here,
so, but the the twelve andunder not due to come back the
district for you, and I thinkin two years. Hold on, here's
the state rotation. There you go, So for baseball for states next year.

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Yet next year we have the eightten states and uh and and in
twenty twenty five, so in twoyears we have the twelve use states.
Oh, very good, And it'sanother big doing when you when you get
all the teams. God of,that's always that's always a lot of fun.
It really is to see all thedifferent teams. I think that's what's

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great about it. You get allthese teams, like and the junior regionals
come in from all the other states, and I think that's great. I
really do. Well. I'll tellyou what I look forward to it.
Thursday morning eight point thirty is openingceremonies and then nine to thirty first game
schedule, and it is the hostteam Milford gonna play Massachusetts in their opening

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game. And again it's bracket playfirst bracket a New England and Brackettbye is
the mid Atlantic States, and thenyou play your bracket. Then the top
what is it, the top twofrom each Nope, everybody makes the playoffs.
Everybody makes up for we are uniqueGeorgia. We like all the teams
to try to you know, we'retrying to figure out a way to get
all the team's five games. Andwith you know, this year, Maine

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couldn't didn't come again, they justcould get it committed from the players.
So that left five teams in themid Atlantic, four in New England.
So on the first day of theplay. On Monday, we go to
the single elimination playoffs, and thatopens with mid Atlantic five versus New England
four. Okay uh, and thenit goes mid Atlantic two versus New England

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three, New England two versus midAtlantic three. And then in the afternoon
on Monday you get the one seedsuh. New England one plays mid Atlantic
four and mid Atlantic one plays thewinner of that four or five game that's
played in the morning. Tuesday morningwe have the semifinals with the four teams
that are left, and then andthen Tuesday, Tuesday afternoon we start the
best two out of three championship.Ye and h. Then there's always a

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game on Wednesday morning, at leastone could be it could be eight.
A lot of times it's been inbut sometimes where the if game is necessary.
You're absolutely right. Yeah, Soa lot going on in the league
in terms of the regionals and theroad to Williamsport, the road to Greenville,
North Carolina, the road to Cookland, Washington. Will any of our

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Connecticut teams make it there? Icertainly hope, so I obviously we follow
it. I'll be following them allanyway, Dennis. I'm up against the
clock. Thanks so much for givingme a few minutes. Thank you for
having me on coach. Always apleasure to talk to you.