Hamilton West Side (Ohio) tops Kentucky, reaches Little League World Series​

The Hamilton West Side Little League baseball team has reached the Little League World Series for the first time since 2021 after defeating Kentucky's North Oldham, 6-0, in Whitestown, Indiana, in the Great Lakes region championship game on ESPN2.

The 2026 Little League World Series begins on Wednesday, Aug. 19, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. As the Great Lakes region winner, West Side will face the yet-to-be-determined Mountain Region champion on Aug. 20 at 2 p.m.

West Side starter Boone Treadway, the son of Badin head coach Brion Treadway, pitched a one-hit, complete-game shutout. He threw 62 pitches, and struck out nine.

"Feels amazing," Treadway told ESPN after the game. "I'm just glad to get to do it with this group of kids."

Josiah Infante hit a two-run homer during West Side's six-run first inning.

West Side is a 23-time Ohio state champion making its sixth LLWS appearance. The team also made LLWS appearances in 1991, 1993, 2007 and 2010.

In 2021, West Side advanced to the LLWS final before losing to Michigan.

West Side and North Oldham met twice in the Great Lakes regional. West Side won the first meeting, 11-4.

West Side cruised past Michigan and Indiana in the first two rounds of the tournament.

Only thing that sucks reading these things this year is knowing we had 3 studs (Styles, Reese, and Downs) and didn’t get it done. What a defense 2025 was.

So happy to see the reports about Reese etc

Classic

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This thread needs to be bumped because I went down a rabbit hole of watching his game film, and this kid is the real deal! If OSU were to land him, I'd put him as top 3-5 best players in the entire class, and honestly he'd be closer to 3 than 5. He's that good! He looks like young version of Eric Berry, imo. He has the talent to crack offensive players in the open field, but also the speed to make up and cover in space. Can line him up at both S spots and Nickel, similar to how Caleb was moved around. He also could be used in the return game as well. Keep an eye out for him
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GeorgiaBuck2 said:

Thought he was with addidas.

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Jeremiah Smith has an NIL deal with Adidas. I remember reading about how he represents them off the field, because he has to wear Nike on the field due to Ohio State's contract with Nike for apparel and shoes.

Chris Henry Jr. has an NIL deal with Nike (as do Bo Jackson and Jermain Mathews Jr.). But I think Henry might have had an NIL deal with Adidas while in high school.

Tanner said:

I dont think we are going much of a drop off on defense. I think the DL will be as good if not better. Linebacker will be worse but still good. Obviously the main concern is not having Downs---he basically prevented big plays himself. My biggest concern is the same it is basically every year---the o line

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Just sayin': The guy was a tackling machine. I don't remember ever seeing him ever miss on open field tackle. So far this season they are talking the OL up. May be it will be better. However, the problem with an OL is they are a team within a team. On any given play you can have four guys play like All-Americans and the other one misses his block (the back is tackled for a loss) and hence the entire OL looks bad. The OL is only good as it's weakest link and that weakest link could be a different guy during the same game especially if the defense rotates their personnel around.

billmac91 said:

Maybe I’m trying to reverse jinx it, but I hate this team. I hate their approach at the plate. I hate Vogt pulling pitchers too early. I hate their approach laziness I see on defense chasing down balls in the gap or down the line.

It’s the exact opposite of the gritty Guardians clubs of recent past. Maybe it’s too many new faces and the culture was lost…..I’m not sure.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so high on a manager and felt so low on him a year later. I think Vogt deserves another year bc this roster is trash, but man, they’ve been awful the last month.

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This team is awful, the only thing that kept them in "contention" for so long was an awful division in an overall awful AL

They have a new lineup every night basically, when you go full platoon with mostly a bunch of rookies and guys who have shown to be nothing more than below average-ish MLB hitters this is exactly what you will get. Once the bullpen fell off a cliff and the starters outside of Williams and Messick started being very shaky it was curtains.

Vogt constantly treating Matt Festa like he is some Andrew Miller level versatile high leverage reliever he can use in any situation when he actually needs outs alone has me wanting him fired. That among a pile of other questionable managing decisions he has made all year. The roster is garbage but his decision making has not exactly helped matters.

pnuts34 said:

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Saw that. Hope it’s true and not true.

True that he’s a stud but not true that he is one and done.

ORD_Buckeye said:

Yes, it's an official ncaa D1 sport. It's considered co-ed though, so there's only one set of points to get.

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Yeah, almost everything you would imagine has an NCAA Championship. The exceptions include 2 sports that are dominated by tOSU.

Artistic (formerly Synchronized) Swimming, which of course tOSU has won 34 times.

And Pistol, which the Buckeyes have won for the last 6 seasons, part of 11 overall co-ed and 8 women’s titles.

So there are a bunch of championships that haven’t been included in the Director’s Cup.

Zurp said:

If you think you're smart by putting "EST" or "CST" after the time a meeting is supposed to start, and you do it wrong, you're someone I want to punch.
"EST" means "Eastern Standard Time". We are currently in "Eastern Daylight Saving Time", or "EDT". If you make a meeting in August for 10:00 EST, you're doing it wrong. If you really want to set the meeting for 10:00EST, just set it for 11:00EDT.

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Over the years, I’ve deleted the ‘D’s and the ‘S’s between the ‘ET’ in probably hundreds of thread titles in an attempt to be accurate and avoid confusion.

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Noted

Gonna be a playmaker for us!

ScriptOhio said:

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Ohio State should feel great about the mental edge they have over TTUN​

snip

Perhaps last year's game was the realization that TTUN is a broken program. It will take years to undo the damage of the cheating scandal. Now that they can't skirt the rules anymore, they are in trouble on the field.

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They've been broken for two decades...cheating to "win*" doesn't change that. What has changed is that they have well and truly been revealed. Sunlight not only ages manure, it brings out the smell.

ScriptOhio said:

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And not a single poster on BP is upset about it!

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pnuts34 said:

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Why does Jermaine look like he's about to cry lol?

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Ross Bjork admits new Ohio State tradition is a big swing-and-miss​

The Ohio State athletic director acknowledged that this tradition has not had the pop he was hoping for.

One of the traditions that Bjork tried to introduce was the playing of a song from the band Caamp, which is from Upper Arlington. They have a song named "Ohio", which Bjork wanted to play in the Shoe to help get fans fired up. Recently, he acknowledged that it hasn't worked out as he had hoped.

Ross Bjork backs down from Ohio State tradition he tried to start​

While speaking on 97.1 The Fan, Bjork admitted that the song hasn't hit in the way he was hoping it would. Bjork said that they will still play the song, but not in the way that they were before.

Just sayin': Never heard of it before. I found the song on YouTube.

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I guess they would have had to of played it on the video screen. I've been to the games and don't ever remember seeing/hearing that song. Actually, I think it is kind of "crappy".......

Anybody actually like that "tradition"?