The trip to Vancouver, Washington, wasn’t quite as fruitful as the Powell All-Stars would have liked, as they saw their Little League Junior West Regional run end after two games.

The combined result of their games against the Oregon and Southern California teams may have been 30-9, though neither game was quite as bad as the final outcome.

“We definitely had the toughest draw,” Powell manager Matthew Lengfelder said. “We faced two of the top three seeds in our two games. Both were solid teams with good pitching that fielded well.”

The opener, against LeGrande, Oregon, was back and forth early on, with a Landon Lengfelder ground-out RBI evening things up at 2-2 in the bottom of the second.

Team Oregon made use of four walks, two hit batters an error and a two-RBI single to plate five runs in the top of the third, but Powell got three back, two on an Aiden Jacobsen single, to make it a 7-5 margin.

Team Wyoming’s pitching, however, was still struggling with command in the fourth as the game began to get away.

Three batters were hit by pitches, two walked and one reached on an error.

LaGrande did get a sacrifice fly and an RBI single as part of another five-run inning to jump the lead back up to 12-5.

Powell would add another three runs, but a disastrous top of the sixth proved the downfall as Oregon plated nine runs for a 21-8 lead that ended it early on the 10-run rule.

“We hit the ball well and put up eight runs against a really good team,” Lengfelder said. “But our pitching faltered. These guys probably haven’t hit as many batters in the last three years as we did here. But that goes to the experience. Teams here will crowd the plate and are good taking the hit rather than getting out of the way.”

Next up was one of two teams from the Golden State, this one being Southern California from the San Diego suburb of Encinitas.

The Southern California team had trounced its Northern California foes in the first round by a 21-10 score, which wouldn’t seem to bode well for Wyoming.

Yet, while the SoCal team would wind up with a 9-1 win, it was more a slow build up of the lead rather than a sudden blowout.

A couple of miscues in the field helped set up a two-run single and a 2-0 lead for the Cali kids after two innings.

The lead went to 3-0 in the third on a wild pitch and 4-0 in the fourth on an RBI double, one of two hits after the first two batters of the inning had been retired.

Wyoming again got the first two outs of the fifth inning, but an infield single, a walk and hit batter loaded the bases, with an error then letting two runs come in.

A walk followed, to reload the bases, and the next batter was hit by a pitch to force in a run for a 7-0 lead.

Powell got on the board in the bottom of the fifth, with Cameron Wentz drawing a two-out walk, moving around on a wild pitch, a Jacobsen base on balls and a balk.

Another wild pitch brought Wentz across, but though Team Wyoming would put two runners on in the sixth and one in the seventh, no more would score, while Southern Cal added two more in the top of the seventh to provide for the final margin.

“They were good, but we saw that they weren’t really any better than us, talent wise,” Lengfelder said. “Colin (Queen) pitched well, but a couple of errors probably cost him an inning or so. They threw three or four good pitchers at us and we hit the ball well, but it was just one of those games where we couldn’t get hits.”

Some solace can be taken in that both Oregon and Southern California, as Lengfelder had alluded to, were two of the three undefeated teams through the two rounds of pool play.

Oregon went on to beat Utah by a 6-4 score, after Utah had trounced the tournament hosts 15-0.

And given that this was by far the biggest stage, and highest level of competition, the players have been on, the experience gained cannot be overstated.

“We were prepared, for the most part, but that first game when they got ahead, we had never been behind,” Lengfelder said. “We’ve been playing as a team for a little over a month and that was something we haven’t experienced and something that takes a few games to understand how to react.

“The thing I’m proud of, in addition to how much we appreciate the support from the Powell community, were so many positive comments from other teams and parents about our kids and how well-behaved they were,” he continued. “We were able to mix in some fun to help the kids take this first step, and it was an experience that will last them a lifetime.”