With the high school season coming to a close on the national scene and the summer circuit officially underway with the Perfect Game National Showcase conducted this past weekend, it’s time to name the 2014 High School National Champion. The honor this year goes to the Barbe (La.) Buccaneers, a team that is no stranger to success this year, nor is their coach, Glenn Cecchini.

After opening up the season as the 20th ranked team in the country, the Buccaneers showed they wouldn’t stop climbing the rankings until they became the top ranked team, moving up in each of the next five rankings. Over those five weeks, Barbe went from 20 to 14, 14 to 7, 7 to 6, 6 to 3, and 3 to 2. They repeated a week as the second ranked team, but once Archbishop McCarthy lost, Barbe claimed the top spot in the April 14 update and never looked back.

For the next ten weeks, and what was ultimately the rest of the season, Barbe remained at the top spot and rode a 28-game winning streak to close out the year. The 28th win was a 7-1 victory over Live Oak, which helped Barbe to capture the Louisiana 5A State Championship, their second in three years.

One of their biggest in-state matchups came against St. Thomas More (ranked No. 13), a team with two players selected in the 2014 MLB First Year Player Draft, and Barbe prevailed in an 8-2 victory.

The Jordan twins, Beau and Bryce, both of whom are committed to Louisiana State for the upcoming fall, led the Buccaneer offense this spring. Bryce led the team with a .481 batting average and seemed to be a magnet for the ball, getting hit an astonishing 35 times. Bryce on the other hand, seemed to have a magnet for the ball in the barrel of his bat as he clubbed a whopping 15 home runs this spring.

Kennon Fontenot, an Oklahoma State commit, and Gunner Leger, a Louisiana-Lafayette recruit, both put up solid numbers with Fontenot driving in 52 runs and Leger batting .438 while going 11-0 on the mound with a 1.94 ERA.

On a team with six Division I commits in the senior class and a TCU commit in junior Braden Comeaux, freshman lefthander Aaron Goree provided a big spark on the mound, logging 68 innings while going 12-0 with a 1.54 ERA.

With the rankings expanding to 100 teams to close out the year, we welcome 51 new entrants with very little change to the top 50, as the majority of high school baseball has been completed this spring.