FORT MYERS, Fla. – The Big Dance at the 16u Perfect Game BCS Finals is set to commence bright and early Wednesday morning, and the remaining contestants have been partnered-up for what is officially known as the semifinal round.
It promises to be quite a gala affair, with four of the playoffs’ top-five seeds seated at the table. There’s the duke of the dance, No. 1-seeded Chain National (7-0-0) from up there in Warner Robins, Ga. No. 2 also arrived in the suitable attire of another prestigious Georgia outfit, with the Marietta-based 643 DP Cougars Sterling (7-0-0) finding a chair in the opposite bracket from the Chain gang.
The No. 3-seed, the always formidable Team Elite Prime 16u (8-0-0) from Winder, Ga., will start the morning off shaking its leg alongside 643 DP. And finally, the No. 5 FTB Pride (8-0-0) will give the great state of Florida a presence in the 16u PG BCS Finals final four, ready to boogie-woogie with top-seeded Chain National.
The dance cards have been passed out and collected, and it seems like the playoff seeding went pretty much according to form. The only missing piece is the local guys, the Cape Coral, Fla.-based, No. 4-seeded Xtreme Tornadoes, who had their balloon popped when they were upended by the No. 20 Frozen Ropes Thornton out of McKinney, Tex., in Tuesday’s second-round of the playoffs.
Even before that 3-2 loss to the Frozen Ropes – a game in which the Ropes led 3-0 after a three-run top of the third and then held off a late Tornadoes’ rally – Xtreme Tornadoes field manager Josh Starr knew the moon and the stars have to align just right at a PG national championship tournament.
“What I’ll take from this tournament whether we win today or tomorrow or we win the whole thing is that we had a great showing,” Starr said Tuesday morning from the JetBlue Player Development Complex. “When it’s single-elimination, anything can happen. Any team can beat any team and the best team doesn’t always win; you just have to come out and play the game.”
The Tornadoes had every reason to feel good about their station in life before Tuesday’s second-round game. They snapped-up the No. 4 seed by winning their pool championship with a 5-0-0 record and outscoring their five pool opponents by a combined 38-9.
They played a first-round playoff game Monday afternoon and easily skipped past the No. 29 All-American Prospect 16u from Port St. Lucie, Fla., by a 10-2 count to further build their confidence level. This was a team that was both hitting and pitching well and had its collective eye firmly set on playing into Wednesday.
“What I really like about this group is they don’t care who they’re playing,” Starr said. “We play the game the same way every time out – we play hard – and we’re not scared of anybody. Just because of the name on the jersey … says one of the top teams that is ranked … we know we can play with anybody; we can beat anybody.”
That confidence came from a run of successes leading up to the 16u PG BCS Finals. Starr described an Xtreme Tornadoes team that is absent a superstar but boasts a roster filled with “a bunch of good baseball players.”
The team was 22-1 this summer before losing Tuesday and after that loss stood 14-2 in three PG tournaments: 4-1 at the 16u PG WWBA East Memorial Day Classic; 4-0 at the PG 16u National Invitational and 6-1 at the 16u PG BCS Finals. One of its top players, 2016 first baseman/right-hander Christian Menendez said so much success had them walking on air.
“It’s really just become kind of second-nature now,” he said Tuesday. “We play and we win, and we don’t expect anything less. We try to play to our full potential every game and come out and play 100 percent.”
This team is built around a core of four players from Cape Coral and Fort Myers that have been playing together for the past seven or eight years. They include Menendez, 2016 outfielder/catcher Trevor Cramer and 2017 middle-infielder Christian Proffitt from Cape Coral, and 2016 left-hander Shawn Babineau from Fort Myers.
Extreme Baseball was formed four years ago by Sandra Menendez – Christian’s mom – and has been fielding teams in PG events since at least 2013. Christian Menendez, a veteran of 27 Perfect Game and PG Super25 tournaments and PG showcases since 2012, has been at 18 PG or PG Super25 tournaments wearing the Xtreme Baseball uniform since 2013; he received all-tournament recognition at eight of them.
“We lost a bunch of players from last summer but we’ve regrouped with Josh (Starr) and Coach Albert (Ayala) and we just went from there,” Menendez said. “We really just trust each other. Everyone knows their roles, we know what we do, and we know what to do when we need to do it. Just don’t try to overdue anything is basically what we live by.”
The Tornadoes managed to hit .310 as a team in their seven games but only 12 of their 53 hits – seven doubles and five triples – went for extra-bases. 2017 shortstop Dylan Ogozaly contributed eight singles in 17 at-bats (.471), drove in five runs, scored seven, stole four bases and posted a .500 on-base percentage. Trevor Cramer had six hits, including a double, and scored eight runs; Cameron Krzeminski was an extra-base machine with two doubles and two triples counted among his five hits.
The most effective pitcher over the Tornadoes run was 2017 right-hander Jordan Schulefand from Parkland, Fla. He threw 7 2/3 innings in two appearances and didn’t allow a run on seven hits while striking out 10 and walking one.
Starr, who has been involved with summer travel baseball for 13 years – he was with the powerhouse Florida Bombers from 2006-11 – fell into this assignment by chance.
He called Sandra Menendez in an attempt to recruit Christian to play with a completely different team Starr was putting together for the summer. According to Starr, Sandra told him that she had 30 kids in her Extreme Baseball program looking to become one or two teams and wondered if Starr would be interested in guiding her group.
He arranged a tryout with those 30 kids Sandra Menendez already had on hand, and brought along the group of prospects that he and co-coach Albert Ayala had recruited for their original team. They wound up with enough players for two teams: the premier Xtreme Tornadoes and a second team called the Xtreme Royal, which also played at the 16u PG BCS Finals.
“This is my favorite age-group,” Starr said. “I did 18u for 12 years and when you get those guys by the time they’re juniors and seniors, they know it all already. At the 16u level they listen to you and they take what you say into consideration. This group is definitely a group that listens and they love to learn. We play the way we’re supposed to play and we have a very talented group of baseball players.”
Starr had nothing but good things to say about the Tornadoes head coach, Albert Ayala, who was a standout pitcher at both Sinclair Community College and Owens Community College in Ohio. Ayala also played six seasons (2007-12) in Independent leagues like the Frontier, American Association and Canadian-American Association
“He really relates to the kids, he works with the pitchers, he always gets fired up, and he coaches with a lot of energy and I think that rubs off on the kids,” Starr said. “He brings a lot of energy to the field and he knows the game. I’ve been doing this now for 13 years and he’s in the top-three of the summer baseball coaches that I’ve been around.”
The Big Dance at this year’s 16u PG BCS Finals national championship will go on as planned Wednesday morning at the CenturyLink Sports Complex without the event’s No. 4 seed, the local favorite Xtreme Tornadoes. That absence does nothing to slow what Starr feels will be the ongoing emergence of yet another elite South Florida travel ball organization.
“My goal, Sandra Menendez’s goal and Albert Ayala’s goal … is to have a very good baseball program with five or six teams where we can go ahead and move kids up to play college baseball,” he said. “That’s what it’s about … and it’s my goal to help every single kid in the program – if they want to move on to play baseball – play baseball; there’s a school for everybody.
“We want to make the Xtreme a brand where we can come in and recruit kids from all over the state of Florida, Georgia, New York – wherever they want to come from – that are quality players that we can help move on to the next level.”