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For some parts of the nation, the 2022 high school softball season is already in a fast and furious mode with games played almost every day.
The Extra Elite 80 preseason national No. 1, for example, is scheduled for games this week from Monday through Friday. Lakewood Ranch of Bradenton, Fla., blew out Fort Myers, 13-0, on Monday, then beat Calvary Christian of Clearwater, 6-0, on Tuesday before playing previously unbeaten Windermere on Wednesday, 3-1, in a result that also showed how good Windermere might be this season.
Texas No. 1 team Lake Creek already improved to 16-0 on Wednesday with a win over New Caney. The defending Class 6A state champions from Deer Park also have already played 22 games (with 20 wins).
Many of the top teams from Southern California plus three nationally ranked teams from Arizona will all be descending on the resort community of Bullhead City, Ariz., this weekend for the 26th annual Dave Kops Tournament of Champions. The list includes No. 2 Villa Park, No. 25 Pacifica (Garden Grove) and No. 37 Los Alamitos from California along with No. 12 Willow Canyon (Surprise), No. 15 Canyon del Oro (Tucson) and No. 31 Perry (Gilbert) from Arizona.
Los Alamitos showed on Monday that it is ready to defend the 2020 TOC title it won with a 10-0 mercy-rule victory over a La Habra (Calif.) team that was 5-0 and had opened its season with a win over heavyweight power Norco. The Griffins had their season shut down, along with the rest of the state and nation, in the week that followed their 2020 TOC championship. The event in Bullhead City was not held last year.
Willow Canyon and Xavier Prep of Phoenix, the top two preseason teams in Arizona, have already played twice and have split.
On the opposite spectrum of all of these teams that have played many games, of course, are those teams from cold-weather states that have yet to play once. Some of those won’t even be playing until April, when their own fast and furious aspect of playing as many as four or five games in one week will be happening.
As a reminder, teams that are still showing at 0-0 on their posted schedules when checked out for these rankings are in most cases kept in the same positions (no moving up or down) until scores start coming in. That was the case for all of the 0-0 teams this week, but there could be some minor movement of a spot or two as more and more teams get going.
— Mark Tennis, Extra Inning Softball
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2022 Extra Elite Eighty High School Team Rankings (March 10, 2022)
(Previous record in parentheses)
(Through reported results of Tuesday, March 8)
- (1) Lakewood Ranch (Bradenton, Fla.) 8-0
- (2) Villa Park (Villa Park, Calif.) 6-0
- (3) Lake Creek (Montgomery, Texas) 16-0
- (4) St. Francis (Mountain View, Calif.) 0-0
- (5) Roncalli (Indianapolis, Ind.) 0-0
- (6) Doral Academy (Doral, Fla.) 4-0
- (7) Marist (Chicago, Ill.) 0-0
- (8) Baylor (Chattanooga, Tenn.) 0-0
- (9) Fairhope (Fairhope, Ala.) 10-0
- (13) Park Vista (Lake Worth, Fla.) 4-0
*** Scroll down to see the rest of the Top 50 plus the Next 30 and the teams that dropped out…