AMERICAN LEGION BASEBALL: Post 206 Adds Junior Legion Team for 2016

HYANNIS — The oldest youth sports program on Cape Cod is growing.

The highly successful Barnstable Post 206 American Legion baseball program — 2012 and 2013 Massachusetts State Champions — is adding a Junior Legion team to the fold for the 2016 season and beyond for all players ages 13-16. This highly competitive team will be comprised of players from Barnstable High School, Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School and St. John Paul II High School. Sturgis East and West players are also eligible to tryout.

Tryouts will be held this Sunday, August 23, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm at Merrill “Red” Wilson Field in South Yarmouth at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School.

The Barnstable Post 206 American Legion baseball team will be adding a junior level team to the program for the summer of 2016.

The Barnstable Post 206 Junior Legion team general manager will be Pat McCaffrey. The head coach will be announced shortly.

There will be 18 players selected for the team. Varsity-level experience is not required to play at the Junior Legion level. Post 206 will compete in the highly competitive District 10 league which boasts teams from Orleans to Norwell.

“There has been considerable interest in fielding a competitive, all-star caliber junior legion team comprised of players from these towns for some time,” said Post 206 general manager and head coach Sean Walsh. “It made perfect sense to develop a top-quality, competitive team at the junior level made up of the best players from Yarmouth to Cotuit and have those players eventually matriculate to our Post 206 senior level team.”

Barnstable Post 206 American Legion first fielded a team in 1923, four years after the inception of Barnstable Post 206 American Legion in Hyannis. The Post 206 team is one of just four Massachusetts teams to win back-to-back state championship titles and has sent over four dozen players to the collegiate level since its resurgence in the late 1990s.

Two Barnstable Post 206 graduates played in the Cape Cod Baseball League this summer — UMass-Amherst outfielder Dylan Morris and Vanderbilt third baseman Will Toffey. Both players were instrumental in helping Barnstable Post 206 win state titles and Morris was a National American Legion Baseball Scholarship recipient and American Legion All-Academic Team selection of which only eight are selected each year from 5,400 Legion teams in the United States.

Four Post 206 American Legion graduates currently play for the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, including senior co-captain Everett Walsh, junior third baseman Terrence Mudie, sophomore outfielder Drew Tardif and sophomore outfielder Connor Kennedy.

“We have great coaches at the Legion level, guys who played collegiate and Cape League baseball,” Walsh said. “We feel it’s our responsibility to help our players grow not only as athletes but as young men. There isn’t a more competitive stage for baseball players at either the junior or senior Legion levels and the proof is in the results. Commitment breeds commitment. The fact we’ve had two Legion All-Americans who received substantial scholarship money when only eight are selected from across the country each year… that shows the type of personal commitment we have from players and from the coaching staffs.”