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ABOUT
Kraig King had known Tony Rico for over 10 years and formally joined the Firecrackers organization when his older daughter Ryan began playing with Firecrackers/Lutterloh in 2012.
When Kraig was approached to coach a younger Firecrackers team in the fall of 2015, he wasn’t sure if he was up for the challenge.
“I knew that I would be impacting these girls lives and I wanted to be sure we were going about it in the right way,” he explains.
King had been an assistant coach with Mike Lutterloh’s Firecrackers team up until that point and he knew that he wanted to take Lutterloh’s philosophy with him to his younger team.
“Mike had a very unique approach to coaching his team. With Mike, you were part of a bigger purpose. He not only focused on finding that one right college for that one right player but he dedicated all of his free time into building his players up, giving them the tools to be successful at the next level and also developing chemistry with both the team and the families.”
“We had several players that had been with him six or seven years. He believed in the system and knew that everyone was going to end up in the right place. I wanted to bring that same approach to my team.”
It took Lutterloh a few seasons to jump on board with supporting a second Firecrackers team and lending his name to the new one. He had poured a lot of time and effort into his older team, but the work paid off, with more than 25 girls committing to play college ball.
King knew he had something special as well with his younger team, with most of his players coming on from the very beginning or soon after and he has made it a point to keep up with Lutterloh’s philosophy on player and family chemistry.
He added assistant Coach Danny Pulfer (2011 Pac-10 All-Conference baseball player for Oregon) in the fall of 2016 and saw instant results in elevation of play with the addition of Pulfer’s condition and training schedule.
The team is somewhat unusual in that Lutterloh is the Recruiting Coach while King is the actual head coach but you can’t argue with the success of the program.
The squad finished 9th in PGF Platinum last year, but only had 11 players due to injuries including ace pitcher Piper Reed who broke her finger a week before the tournament and, because of tourney rules, was unable to add anyone else because the window to bring in new players had closed.
The last six months, though the team has impressed with a fall record of 42-9 against top teams from the West Coast as well as competing well against good East Coast teams in the Georgia Force Showcase.
Here’s a sampling of the Firecrackers top finishes:
- 2017 14U TCS Pre-Thanksgiving Tournament: 1st Place (defending its 2016 title)
- 2017 14U TCS Don Battles On Tournament: 1st Place (heading to Colorado Sparkler Power Pool this summer with the winning berth.)
- 2017 14U TCS San Diego Toy Drive Tournament: 1st Place (defeated two top Athletics teams to win the title)
- 2018 14U Shutt Cup 2nd Place (lost in the championship game to Demarini Athletics Devers out of Arizona in eight innings.)
- 2018 14U Ohana Tigers Winter Classic 5th place (lost to the eventual winners, Athletics-Mercado 2021 in the quarter-finals)
This summer, the Firecrackers will again at several top-level tournaments including the Triple Crown Sports Zoom into June, the Colorado Sparkler Power Pool and the PGF Premier Nationals.
The current roster includes 14 players with nine of them having been with the team for three years or more. The team is “dark” now because 10 are playing high school ball in Southern California, but is still competing in limited action around its home base in Huntington Beach, California.
Here’s a closer look player-by-player at the team with comments from the coaching staff…
PITCHERS:
Piper Reed (2022, uncommitted)
The right-hander is 6-foot-4 and already has offers from Boston College and BYU. She was ranked #48 in the Extra Elite 100 rankings and is the real deal. She also has interest from Michigan and LSU.
