They didn't have a coach, were short players and for a while it looked like the Peterborough Canadian Tire peewee Tigers would have to fold.

Aaron Gilmoure wasn't going to let that happen.

An assistant coach the previous two years for his son Adam's team, Gilmoure volunteered to be head coach. He scoured the bushes for help bringing in four players who had never played organized baseball let alone rep. He recruited first-time coaches Todd Murray, Dave French and Gord Shannon to join his staff. After having eight players at fall tryouts, they scraped together 15 for a spring camp and started with basic fundamentals.

Just happy to have a team the Tigers were surprised to win their Eastern Ontario Baseball Association (EOBA) opening game against Oshawa, a team they'd not fared well against historically. They were astonished when two months later they were 17-0, ultimately finishing in first place at 21-3. They were reclassified from A to AA for the Ontario Baseball Association (OBA) championships and headed to Windsor expecting to be crushed at a level they weren't used to playing. They went 2-1 in the round-robin and ultimately lost in the semifinal to the eventual champion Barrie Red Sox - a third-place finish.

On Saturday, Gilmoure, already named EOBA Junior Coach-of-the-Year, accepted the OBA Junior Coach-of-the-Year Award during a banquet in Sault Ste. Marie.

"Without Aaron and the other coaches efforts none of this would have happened," said team manager Laura Armstrong. "There wouldn't have been a team at all."

"It should be a team award for all the effort everybody put in," Gilmoure said. "It's pretty cool recognition for a bunch of misfits. It worked out pretty well."

When all was said and done there were nine returning players, two who were talking into coming back after a hiatus and four newcomers.

"It's one of those things where you're a parent and you're angry because your kid doesn't have a place to play," Gilmoure said. "Todd and Dave kind of rallied and contacted (Peterborough Baseball Association president) Gary Holbrook and asked 'How can we save this.' As a threesome we had a parent meeting and went from there."

Gilmoure's nomination went far beyond the team's win-loss record, said Armstrong.

"Aaron made the boys love baseball again," Armstrong said. "They played the whole year with smiles on their faces. He taught them to never give up when they were down. They never felt like they were letting him down when they didn't win and he was able to put a positive spin on every loss or missed play. The whole coaching staff worked extremely hard to create a team that was very sportsmanlike, as many teams who played us commented on the outstanding behaviour and attitude of our boys."

"It looked pretty grim in the fall," Murray said. "We were able to scramble a few together over the winter and have new tryouts in April. We had a few kids who had never really played before or seen a bat or glove. We were able to get them to improve and become ball players."

He said Gilmoure has a special way with the players.

"He treated every kid equally and allowed the kids to not be too scared to make an error," Murray said. "If they made mistakes they were able to learn from them. They were able to take more risks on the field of play without worrying about making those mistakes."

It was Gilmoure's first year as a head coach in baseball. He's also coached minor hockey. He said the hard work of the players drove the team's success.

"We didn't have a superstar but every game some kid did something that was really outside of himself," Gilmoure said. "We had kids who had never really had anything remarkable happen to them previously hit a walk-off run or make an amazing catch in the field. It was a different kid every time."

Gilmoure said his greatest reward was arriving at fall tryouts again in September.

"This is the best part of the whole effort. Last year we had eight kids come," he said. "This year we had 24."

mike.davies@sunmedia.ca