WAKING up at 4.30 in the morning to travel an hour and a half to play your chosen sport in a “dust bowl” might not be everyone’s dream trip to Bangkok, but for young start baseball player Dylan McMile, it was just the next step in his budding career.
The 13-year-old travelled to Bangkok last month to take part in the South East Asia Youth Baseball and Softball Tournament (SEAYBST), along with his under 15s team, an under 13s boys juniors team, an under 19s seniors team, an under 15’s girl’s softball team and an under 19s girl’s senior softball team.
Dylan’s team managed to wrangle bronze, with Manila and home team Bangkok coming in second and first respectively.
“They did really well, it was a pretty hard tournament,” Dylan said, and not just for the sporting competition.
David McMile, Dylan’s father, took on the role of team manager, and as such had to have the whole team ready every day to travel to the stadium.
“It was pretty difficult. You know, you’ve got a whole bunch of 14, 15-year-old kids, it can get pretty disorganised pretty quickly,” Mr McMile said.
“But they’re all good kids and they wanted to be there, so it never really got that bad.”
Dylan and his teammates had some obstacles to overcome, including weather and culture shock, but Dylan said he was just happy to get there and get into the games.
“Our first match was against Singapore, and we smashed them, 16 to five,” he said.
“Then unfortunately we lost the next game against Bangkok, 8 to two. And we lost against Manila after that, but we we’re really close. We got smashed in the fifth inning.”
The Perth team made a strong stand against Manila and Jakarta, with big run takes in the later innings bringing the scores back within a few runs of each other, but they were unable to win.
From there, though, they made a fiery comeback.
“We were getting smashed by Jakarta, it was 16 to one at one point,” Dylan said.
“But then we came back and ended up on 15, so that was really good.”
The team played Jakarta again in the final match for third place, and proved why they were a contender despite early losses.
“We did really well in that game, we won by 16 to one,” Dylan said.
Mr McMile was enormously proud of both his son and the team, saying they couldn’t have done any better in the circumstances.
“It was tough, but the boys really got it together and proved how good they were,” he said.
“They were all well-behaved, no-one had any problems with calls and they all just were there for each other. I couldn’t be more proud.”
From here, Dylan is excited to keep the good run going, with the next SEAYBST competition heading to Perth in 2017.
“I’ve got a short break, but then spring training starts up again,” he said.
“I’m really happy. I just can’t wait to try again next time.”
