Coach Smith is featured speaker at upcoming Bulldog Ball

It was an exciting year Bulldog baseball coach Dick Smith said about 1999 when his team finished in the final four of the Class 2A state baseball tournament. 

“Actually it was quite an unusual year,” Smith recalled. “We really weren’t expected to get there. It was one of those years that luck was on our side. In several games we would be way behind and come back in the last inning to win.” For this reason, the team’s parents, fans, and even coach would refer to that group as the “cardiac kids”.

The Bulldogs upset No. 2 Cascade in their first game at Marshalltown (site of the Class 2A and 4A state championship games). A sixth-inning grand slam homerun by Council Bluffs St. Albert dashed Ogden’s hopes of a championship.

“Even after that, we still came back and had a chance to win in the seventh inning,” recalled Smith, “but I guess our luck just ran out. Council Bluffs had a couple kids on that team that went pro. It is fun knowing we played against that kind of competition.”

Smith, as guest speaker, will be sharing some of the highlights from that season and other great baseball memories at the 2018 Bulldog Ball. 

PHOTO ID: “That was a gritty team that faced adversity all year,” said photographer Dave Pfaltzgraff who was covering the Bulldogs in 1999. Coach Dick Smith’s Ogden Bulldogs finished in the Final Four of the Class 2A state tournament at Marshalltown. 

Rread more in the Feb. 28 issue of The Ogden Reporter.