On Sat, May 2, the Fountain Valley Space Cowboys Pony League team took on the Garden Grove White Sox in a Bronco Division playoff game in Garden Grove, Calif. The Bronco division of Pony League is for young ballplayers aged 11-12 years old to compete in an annual basis as they make their way up the Pony League division ladder.
The head coach of the FV Space Cowboys team, Bobby Guillen, did well to coach his team of boys to the semifinals of the local Bronco Gold playoffs. As the executive vice president of Fountain Valley Pony League Baseball, Guillen has been a coach in the system for nine years.
Guillen likes his role as Space Cowboys head coach because of the “opportunity to develop players and seeing them put out their most potential”. Guillen added that he had the chance to coach a good majority of the players on this team in lower divisions of Pony League baseball and he cherished the chance to see them develop into young adults.
The Space Cowboys scored a couple of early runs in the first inning and they held their lead all the way through until the sixth inning, when the Garden Grove White Sox team tied the game at five runs apiece.
The game went into extra innings, where an automatic runner was placed on second base and the pitching side only needed to get two outs to end the inning. The home team White Sox didn’t allow the Space Cowboys side to score in the top of the eighth and they walked off the game on an RBI single in the bottom part of the eighth.
Despite the loss, Guillen told his players to keep their heads up as they had a good 2026 season in the Bronco division with a winning record. But Guillen said that having a winning record comes with its challenges for younger and less experienced players because “sometimes you get a little complacent and kind of used to winning”.
In a postgame meeting with his players, Guillen emphasized to them that “life isn’t fair” and sports are a perfect example of that. “But how they come back from that in the next game or the next practice shows where they’re at in their character”, Guillen said.
As for the future of players on his team, Guillen predicted that some of them were going to go into the FVPB Select team, which is separate from the recreational side of Pony League Baseball. “Unfortunately with competition from outside leagues or other travel opportunities, it’s taking away from the recreation side and having the opportunity to be a rec coach of a team of this caliber does give me hope”, Guillen said.
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