The mentality of a little leaguer is much different than one of an older athlete and building confidence at a young age is crucial.

The Valley West Little League team was roaring with confidence, as it took on Jim Thorpe in the second game of the District 18 9-10 year-old championships.Valley West came out of the gate scoring five runs in the first inning and never looked back as it defeated Jim Thorpe, 11-1, to sweep the best-of-three series.Two passed balls and RBIs from Valley West's Anthony Sarah and Michael Mehalshick accounted for the damage in the bottom of the first inning."These kids are just nine and ten years old and everyone has the butterflies," said Valley West head coach Jeff Antolick. "When you can come out right away and throw some runs on the board it's huge."Jim Thorpe only had two bad innings, giving up five runs in each the first and fifth innings. Essentially, innings two through four was a 1-1 ball game. Anthony Voto accounted for Jim Thorpe's run as he smacked a double in the top of the fourth inning."Our kids played hard and never gave up," said Jim Thorpe manager James Lordi. "Valley West is a nice baseball team with good pitching. We ran a little short on pitching, but you have to play a lot of games to get here."Valley West had RBIs from four different players in the fifth inning to end the game, but its manager seemed to be more impressed with the performance on the mound yesterday.Brett Antolick was the impressive starting pitcher for Valley West. Antolick struck out eight and walked just two en route to victory."Jim Thorpe has a great program, so we had to come prepared to play," said the Valley West manager. "Our pitching staff did a great job. We worked hard on brining the ball into the zone and working ahead of the count so I'm really proud of the job done out there today."despite the loss, Lordi know this Jim Thorpe team accomplished a lot."The team did a great job winning the South Division and I'm very proud of them," he said. "I'm looking forward to the Panther Valley Tournament. All of the kids are friends, work hard, and hustle. I love this tournament it was a great experience. We only have six ten year old player so we're young and we will have a good team next year as well."Antolick was also proud of his Valley West team and is looking forward to playing more baseball on the near future."They're a great group of kids to coach because they love baseball. I'm awfully proud of my team and they way we continue to battle every inning. Hopefully we can make some noise at sectionals now."Jim Thorpe 000 10 - 1 2 1Valley West 501 05 - 11 8 2Richebacher, Baldassano (4), McHugh (5) and Chimenti; Antolick and Russo. W - Antolock. L - Richebacher.Game 1Valley West-Jim ThorpeValley West was victorious over Jim Thorpe, 13-3, on Saturday. The victory gave Valley West the 1-0 lead in the best of three championship series.Valley West had contributions throughout the lineup on the offensive end.Valley West had solid pitching contributions from Luke Russo and Jacob Kulig, who both tossed three innings.