That's awesome Steve. I always watch the series when I can. Saudi Arabia use to be in the MEA before they moved us to the Asia brackets. The team was exclusively Aramco students and they went to Williamsport. I'm not sure how many times they went to the show but it was more than a few. Here is perhaps the best pure player we had in 2008. Great kid Chris Beyers. His parents were both pro cyclists from South Africa but almost every other player is from the USA. This video only has a few of the highlights. Chris Berman was talking about him. I was at the Bucksnort Saloon in Pine, Colorado watching when they were playing Japan. A person at the bar thought I was full of shit about knowing them. Bet him a beer and then produced my company ID, damn tasty beer!
I remember on Halloween in camp back in 2008 people would not let Cameron trick or treat because they thought he was a college kid. I remember him begging, "Mr. Slick, man tell 'em I'm a sixth grader." Pretty damn funny. All of the kids are blonde because they bleach their hair before they go to the qualifiers. One of the kids in the dugout shot is an Eagle Scout.
We were loaded back in the day. Now the company has gone to other countries for employees and those days are over. Our student population is only 20% US now.
and this from wikipedia
Aaron Durley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aaron Durley (born July 21, 1993) is a former
Little League World Series
baseball player known for his exceptional size, a former all-state high school basketball player, and a former player for
Texas Christian University's basketball team (
TCU).
[1]
Durley was born in
Houston,
Texas. He first became the object of media attention in 2005 (though garnered much more in
2006 when he had grown 4 more inches to 6' 8"),
[2] when he played first base
[3][4] and pitched
[5] and batted fifth
[2] in the Little League World Series for the Arabian American team from
Dhahran,
Saudi Arabia, which is composed of the children of expatriate employees of Saudi Aramco (the Saudi national oil company), many from the
United States.
[6][7][8][9][10] At 6' 9", 245, Durley is the biggest player in Little League World Series history.
[11][12] He was taller than the average NBA player.
[13]
He had previously played for the Arabian American team in the
2005 Little League World Series. By 2008, Durley was 6' 10", weighed 265 pounds, and wore a size 19 shoe.
[14][15] In August 2009, Durley was 6' 11" tall, weighed 250 lbs.,
[12] and takes a size 20½ shoe.[
citation needed]
Aaron received some of his shoes from big time basketball players such as Rockets star Yao Ming, and University of Texas center Dexter Pittman.[
citation needed] For five years, Durley has lived with his parents in Saudi Arabia, where his 6' 8" father works for
Saudi Aramco and coached his Dhahran team.
[16] His mother, Dana, is just under 6 feet tall.
[2][16] Previous to that, he lived in
Calgary,
Alberta,
Canada, where his father had moved from Texas.
[17]
Aaron is attending high school in Houston at
St. Thomas High School, and living with his grandparents.
[18][19] Described by the
Houston Chronicle in November 2008 as a "freshman phenom", he got 16 points in his first game with the team.
[18] In 2010, he was named by the
Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools to its second-team Class 5A All-State Boys Basketball Team.
[20]
His brother Cameron Durley participated in the
2008 Little League World Series, also as a member of the Dhahran, Saudi Arabia team. Cameron was 6' 2" and 228 lbs. at 12 years of age.
[21] His grandfather, Wilson Graham, played college basketball in Ohio, and his father played at
East Texas State.
[17] His aunt is former
WNBA player Margo Graham.
[22]
On October 26, 2011, Durley committed to play basketball at Marquette University in Milwaukee starting in the 2012 season.
