Club Event Recap: 1st Annual Virginia Glory Spring Invitational Featured “Competitive Fire” & Surprising Upsets in the East

Suzy Willemssen’s Virginia Glory organization has become well know for its summer time Glory Strike Out Cancer Tournament and College Coach’s clinic.  Each year, this event—which raises money for pediatric cancer research—grows and attracts great teams at 14U, 16U, and 18U from across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

This Spring, she decided to run a spring tournament under the Glory banner for the younger age divisions (10U, 12U, and 14U) and bring purpose-driven softball to a younger group of players.

Like her summer tournament, the competition was spread out across Fairfax County, Virginia and was organized and executed by the coaches, parents, and players from her Glory organization.

The event held last weekend—April 23 & 23, 2022—was the Virginia Glory Spring Invitational tournament and was an open format with 3 pool games in a single elimination format.

This wasn’t just a local event, however, as there were 75 teams from eight states who descended upon Fairfax County, Virginia for the event with 30 teams each at 14U and 12U and 15 squads battling at 10U.

The teams came from organizations with national reputations such as Lady Lightning Gold, Virginia Unity, Newtown Rock, Beverly Bandits, Lady Dukes, Team Long Island, Jersey Intensity, Starz Gold, and PA Chaos, to name a few, along with highly-competitive regional teams like the Diamond State Ducks, North Carolina Heartbreakers and the Shamrocks (from Virginia).

To add particular Glory touches to the tournament, pools were seeded based on historical performance and then brackets were seeded 1-30 (1-15 at 10U) based on Win-Loss record, runs allowed and run differential.

The top half of the seeds fall into a single elimination Gold bracket and the bottom half fall into a single elimination Silver bracket.  This provided competitive parity on Sunday across all brackets, and ensured no team had an easy game or a short path to the championship.

Another twist was that coaches were free to bat as many players as they wanted and to substitute freely on defense.  These two factors provided coaches with a lot of flexibility in how they managed both pool and bracket games.

Some regional teams brought the “competitive fire” Saturday and surprised some of the national organizations:

At 10U, the North Carolina Heartbreakers grabbed the #1 seed going 4-0 on the day with no runs allowed while taking down 10U teams from PA Chaos and VA Unity.  All of the Heartbreakers’ players live within 30 minutes of Greenville, NC.

The head coach, Brandon Peebles, said they made the drive to Northern Virginia looking for competition and they brought the fire.  In the 12 and 14U divisions, Team Long Island and Josh Johnson’s Virginia Unity team earned the 1 seeds.

In a marquee matchup on Saturday, LLG 2026 beat Brittany O’Donnell’s Jersey Intensity team 6-5 and, continuing their organization’s strong showing, the 14U North Carolina Heartbreakers played Starz Gold’s 14U National team to a 0-0 tie.

Sunday play brought out the battles across all divisions and brackets:

10U Results

At 10U, Beverly Bandits Premier coached by Tina Madison took the Gold Championship by beating the Lady Dukes, the Hanover Hornets, and then the NC Heartbreakers 5-2 in the Championship game.

12U Results

At 12-U, six of the 15 bracket games were walk-off victories.

The Lady Dukes of NJ, coached by Danielle Panikiewsky prevailed in the 16-team bracket with a 2-1 walk-off victory over LLG Wools, a 5-0 victory over PA Chaos, a 5-4 victory over the Hanover Hornets, and a 6-3 victory over the South Jersey Mystics in the Championship game.

In the championship game, the Dukes rallied from a 3-0 deficit to win.

14U Results

The 14U bracket was a true gauntlet.

In round one, Virginia Unity fell to Invasion Fastpitch, a regional organization based just NW of Philadelphia, and Jersey Intensity avenged its loss to LLG 2026.  Another regional team, the Delaware Tribe, made a run to the semi-finals along with three national teams, Jersey Intensity, Starz Gold, and the Hanover Hornets.

In the championship game, it was Starz Gold National prevailing over Hanover Hornets National 4-0 and capping a dominate day of softball.  Prior to the championship game, Starz Gold beat Jersey Intensity 11-4, the Lady Dukes 7-1, and Team Long Island 5-0.

The 14U Gold Bracket at Glory’s Spring tournament likely represents many of the teams we will see later in the summer at the large showcases across the nation and at the Alliance and PGF championships.

For an inaugural event, the Glory organization showed its excellence and passion for the game.  Coach Willemssen said afterwards:

“We look forward to hosting the best teams from across the Mid-Atlantic, the Northeast and perhaps beyond again next year.”

For this year’s tournament, a full list of teams and results can be seen on Glory’s website (click HERE), also in Tourney Machine (click HERE).