Little League Team from Hastings Gets Ready for First Game at World Series

Aug. 17, 2021, noon ·

Little League team from Hastings, Nebraska
The team from Hastings, Nebraska at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. (Photo courtesy of Little League World Series)

A team from Hastings, Nebraska is getting ready for its first game at the Little League World Series in Pennsylvania Thursday. Hastings won the Midwest Regional in Indianapolis over the weekend and is one of 16 teams competing for the Little League title. Hastings Manager Dustin Rader said his team has adjusted well to the big stage in Williamsport.

“So far we’ve done really well with handling the noise as I call it and really just trying to do what they do and have fun,” Rader said. “Our team motto is ‘you be you’. I remind them of that constantly. You go out there and all we’re worried about is you being you and the rest just kind of takes care of itself.”

This is the second team from Nebraska to make it to the Little League World Series. The first was a team from Kearney that advanced in 2012. Rader, whose son is on the team, doesn’t expect the next week to be easy.

“I was honest with the boys, a lot of these teams are better than us, they might be smarter than us, they might be faster than us, but that doesn’t mean they out-compete us. I think that’s how we got through Indianapolis, was out-competing the opponents,” Rader said.

Hastings, representing the Midwest, will play a team from New Jersey on Thursday afternoon. There are no international teams represented at the Little League World Series this year because of the pandemic.