RANKINGS
EVENTS
I COMMITTED
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ABOUT
Thursday was the elimination day for many teams still striking to make Saturday’s PGF National Championship Games and favorites emerged as did some big pitching performances.
Here’s a look at how things stood after Thursday’s action when eight teams were left standing in the 18U and 16U Premier divisions…
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18U
The interesting stat of the day…
Entering Friday’s play there were two from the Winner’s Bracket and six from the Loser’s Brackets still with a chance to play Saturday for the National Championship.
The two Winner’s Bracket teams were A’s – Mercado/Smith (Bracket A) and So Cal A’s – Richardson (Bracket B):
In Bracket A with one loss already were the Birmingham Thunderbolts, Universal-Garcia and Georgia Impact-Lewis teams.
In Bracket B with one loss were the Tampa Mustangs-TJ, Firecrackers-Rico/Weil and OC Batbusters-Stith squads
There have been nine PGF 18U Premier National Championship so far (this is year 10, happy birthday PGF!) and the first four were won by the So Cal A’s Richardson teams, the next two by the OC Batbusters, then single ones by Firecrackers-Rico, Beverly Bandits-Conroy and Georgia Impact-Lewis.
So do you see where we’re going with this?
Of the nine previous 18U PGF Nationals titles, eight of them were won by teams still playing Friday… the only one that didn’t make it to the Final 8 this week was the Bandits-Kelley/Tyrrell team and they just lost by one run to the Mustangs to be eliminated on Thursday (although Bill Conroy’s 16U team is doing well in the 16U Winner’s Bracket (see below)
Meaning, great teams and programs tend to keep winning. They have longevity and success because they develop their talent and win, which tends to keep drawing talent. A nice synergistic circle of success!
Take Bruce Richardson of the So Cal A’s… up until last year his team’s had never finished lower than 5th (finished 7th last year) and he won the first four 18U titles!
Not one of the flashy coaches, he just has been successful for a long time and continues to develop outstanding players like pitcher/hitter Devyn Netz (2020, Arizona), who has been one of the stars of this week, not just in the circle but at the plate.
She hit a pair of two-run home runs in a 4-2 win over the OC Batbusters to make the semi-finals where they will be in a great position of facing either the Bolts, Universal, or Georgia Impact and will have to be beaten twice.
Netz also pitched the complete game win giving up just five hits to the strong Batbuster offense and had four strikeouts.
“This is my dream, to keep doing this,” she said after the win about the team’s undefeated run to the National Championship. “We had to come together as one team and to come here and give it all that we have and leave it all on the field.”
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An interesting matchup could be the A’s – Richardson team and the Athletics – Mercado/Smith team, which has looked very strong.
They share the same name because Dave Mercado used to be in Richardson’s organization and started his own with mutual good feelings on the departure which, if remembered correctly, had to do with sponsorship opportunities that were different than the A’s under Richardson.
Mercado has built his organization into a championship-winner too and has talent up and down the lineup.
In a big 10-0 win over the Birmingham Thunderbolts in a Winner’s Bracket game, the power bats came up big as three Power 5-bound players—Emily Cazares (2020, Tennessee), Alycia Flores (2019, Oklahoma) and Lexi Sosa (2019, UCLA)—each hit two-run blasts in one inning to make it to the semi’s.
Sosa, known for years as an outstanding pitcher, has shown her offensive skills as she has six home runs in five games. Sosa can be an ace pitcher, but with the great pitching of Allison Royalty (2020, Arizona State), the UCLA commit has been able to use her bat more to help the team, although she got in an inning in the Bolts win.
Royalty had eight K’s in four innings in the run-rule shortened game and in an earlier win over Firecrackers – TJ, Ryleigh White (2020, Tennessee) pitched a shutout so the A’s are very deep in the circle
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Shelby Lowe (2020, Auburn) gave up four of the runs in the loss, but she gets a huge pass after the two previous games she had.
