PGF 18U Premier Blind Draw Ends Up with Huge 1st Round Matches

Saturday morning in Anaheim saw the PGF Nationals coaches in the 18U, 12U and 10U age divisions meet at the Phoenix Club for a breakfast and instructions for the week and then a blind draw was held by age group with legendary Batbuster coach Gary Haning overseeing the 18U Premier draw.

Beverly Bandits organization lead Bill Conroy oversaw the drawing of the balls which had the numbers for each team corresponding to the first-round match-ups and there are some interesting ones to watch:

• Conroy’s Bandits team, which won the National Championship last year, starts off Monday morning atop Bracket A against another powerhouse, Mike Stith’s OC Batbusters squad, and Stith’s teams won the 2015 and 2016 PGF 18U National Championships.
• The winner of that game will then face the winner of the Lady Lightning and Texas Blaze-Slimp game which match two strong teams from North Carolina and Texas, respectively.
• Two more huge first-round games takes place in Bracket B as play-in games featuring long-time powerhouses at the PGF 18U Nationals level: Birmingham Thunderbolts vs. So Cal Choppers-Fausett and also Explosion-Denio vs. So Cal A’s-Richardson (the winner of the first four 18U Premier titles).
• Sticking to Bracket B, Tony Rico’s Firecrackers team opens playing Explosion-Jacobsen as a play-in game and if the Firecrackers, which won the PGF 18U title two years ago, won that game they will face the Texas Bombers which are a favorite to go far too.
• Back in Bracket A, the East Cobb Bullets–which won the World Fastpitch Championship over the Bombers–opens with a tough game against the Oro Valley Suncats and if the Bullets would win the game it faces a nemesis from home, the Impact Gold-Lewis team.

It will be a fun week with pool games Saturday and Sunday and the “fun” of bracket games kicking off Monday culminating in the 18U Premier title game Friday night at 4:30 pm PST.

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Here are both of the brackets as they were posted after the blind draw: