This will give us a chance to catch our breath before we start another big push next year.

No one really gave us much of a chance. But it's been a magical season thus far. I told my kids that they had nothing to lose.

This 16-team tournament gave us a chance. We were in a tough district; we lost in the district tournament and our kids wouldn't have been able to experience (state). But because of this, we have a second life. Hey, we're thrilled. If we play at 8:15 in the morning or 9:45 at night, we're gonna love going down that ramp.

The pace of this growth will slow down, but probably not until we approach 2008.

This could be our first chance in years to compete at state. Truckee and North Tahoe will be the teams to beat, but the kids are really excited and everybody is pushing one another to do well this season.

That's one of those situations where if you take a chance, you could blow it just as easily. If I had another opportunity and knew it was going to go nine innings I might have taken the chance, but I felt their shortstop had a cannon for an arm and that the catcher would have needed to drop the ball for us to score.