RANKINGS
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I COMMITTED
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ABOUT
One top college coach recently had a great line: “You just watch: the travel ball transfer portal will have twice the activity of the college transfer portal.”
With the end of the summer, it’s the time when tryouts take place to build—or reload—for club teams and in, not surprisingly, we’re already seeing a lot of movement including many of the best players in their classes set to wear new uniforms this year.
There are many reasons why players change teams: it may be to look for opportunities to play higher-level competition (sometimes at the encouragement of their future college coaches), or because a team folds and they have to move on. It may simply be because they get to compete with players they’re friends with and/or may be lining up with in college. Or it simply may be on a team closer to home.
This week, we’ve come across several key roster moves and the domino effect is interesting. For example, two of the Top 10 players in the 2021 Extra Elite 100 have recently disclosed they’re moving to new club teams and the clubs they’re leaving are working hard to replace them.
We’ll begin looking at some of these team changes by spotlighting programs across the country and the impact of some of these moves (if you have ones you’d like to forward to us, please email: [email protected]).
Today, we focus on a Southeast powerhouse team that has become one of the best in the nation at the 18U level: Georgia Impact – Lewis.
— Brentt Eads, Extra Inning Softball
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When a team like the Georgia Impact coached by Patrick Lewis, which has been in a PGF National Championship game three of the past four years, loses talent to graduation like infielder Bailey Dowling and pitcher Alex Salter—both now at Alabama—then you know you’re going to have to fill in some notable holes.
No problem: enter two Top 5 players in their respective classes, both committed to Florida, in 2023 infielder Mia Williams (ranked #2 in her class) and 2021 pitcher Lexie Delbrey (ranked #4), who announced this week that they’d be joining the roster of this championship team!
Mia was the top-ranked player in her class last year and, ironically, played with, is good friends with and will attend college with, the current ##1 in the 2023 Extra Elite 100 in Mojo pitcher Keegan Rothrock who, like Mia, committed to Tim Walton and the Gators when in the 7th grade in 2017.
Click HERE to read “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Mia Williams”
Mia had helped Mojo 2024 – Fisher win multiple national championships including the PGF 14U Premier Nationals last summer and the USA Softball 16U title this year but felt like she needed to play against older competition.
At the Top Club National this summer, when her Mojo team finished 2nd to Hotshots Premier – Nelson, the young athlete sat in the stands after her title game los and watched the 18U championship between Georgia Impact and the A’s – Mercado/Smith team, which won the crown.
Williams realized then that she needed to make a move to play 18U if the opportunity presented itself.
Knowing some players on the Impact team and, during a session with her hitting coach and Impact assistant coach Lincoln Martin, she asked if the highly successful 18U squad would be interested in her.
“I’m ready to fail and I’m ready to grow,” Mia said of why she wanted to play at the highest level of club ball. “By the time I’m a senior, I’ll have made adjustments to that level and whoever I face in 18U will be who I face in college.”
Without Martin saying anything, according to Williams, she told him was interested in joining the Impact.
“I was hitting with Lincoln and told him, ‘I want this,’” she explains. “I know I’m walking away from a fantastic team (Mojo 04 – Fisher) with great coaches, players and parents and I told them, ‘I love you guys, but I feel this is something I have to do to prepare for college.”
Scroll down to read more about the Impact – Lewis’s new additions…