CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – The Racine, Wis. based Hitters Baseball club is accustomed to playing deep into the playoffs at the WWBA Kernels Foundation Championship. The program enjoyed a third-place finish a year ago, falling to the eventual event champions St. Louis Gamers 17u team in the semifinals, and took the championship trophy home with them in both 2002 and 2007.

Led by long-time Head Coach and owner R.J. Fergus, this year the Hitters have brought two teams with them to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Rawlings Hitters National Baseball Club 2015's are made up almost entirely of 2015 grads from Southeastern Wisconsin. The Rawlings Hitters National Baseball Club 2016's is made up exclusively of players from the 2016 class, a class that is stacking up to be Wisconsin's best in over 10 years.

Shortstop Gavin Lux, currently the 124th player overall in PG's class of 2016 rankings, is the standout on this team. Already committed to Virginia Tech, he is joined by other notable Wisconsin 2016 players including fellow infielder Justin Lavey (ranked 249th in the 2016 class, Louisville commit), catcher Ben Rortvedt (259, Arkansas) and outfielders/righthanded pitchers Cyrillo Watson (456, Illinois) and Dominic Clementi (473, Michigan).

Lux, Lavey, Clementi and Rortvedt serve as the team's 1-2-3-4 hitters in the Hitters lineup, and have helped propel the the team to the playoffs by claiming their pool, arguably the deepest pool at this year's Kernels Foundation Championship.

Those players also represent five of the seven currently listed among the top 500 of Perfect Game's aforementioned 2016 player rankings. You have to go back to 2004 and 2005 to find more than a small handful of players from the Dairy State listed among those year's respective rankings.

The most notable of those players is Sturgeon Bay native Erik Cordier, drafted by the Royals in the second round of the 2004 draft and currently a member of the San Francisco Giants bullpen thanks to his 100 mph fastball.

“I think our class is really good in Wisconsin,” Lux said after the team's 2-0 over Elite Baseball Training 2015 on Saturday. “I think it's going to keep getting better and it's good to see a state like this get some recognition because usually there's not a whole lot of depth of talent.”

It's hard to determine if this is a one-year anomaly or a sign of things to come from Wisconsin, but programs like the Hitters are helping to put the state, and its talent, on the right track.

“I think it's programs like the Hitters, and then there's a couple of other pretty good programs in Wisconsin, and I think that contributes to it a lot,” Lux added. “We're kind of sick and tired taking losses from teams from farther down (south). We're starting to work harder and moving toward the right direction.”

With a recently completed 40,700 square foot facility located in Caledonia, Wis., less than 20 miles south of Milwaukee, the Hitters are committed to helping their players, of all ages, train year round. The new building will be full of hitting cages, pitching mounds as well as a full-sized infield.

“It's going to be really exciting,” Hitters Coach John Lequia said of the new facility. “One of the things you struggle with being up north is the weather. Now we have a field to work with. It helps when you're working with different coverages defensively. We can just get more ground ball work.

“It's really going to help our younger teams be a little more successful. It should help it be not such a big transition out of the winter and into the spring.”

The Hitters were faced with their toughest task on Saturday, facing the powerful Elite Baseball Training 2015 club, a team that boasts 17 Division I recruits on their 18 player roster. And the pitcher that took the mound was the highest ranked of all of those players, righthander Drake Fellows, currently ranked 21st in the 2016 class.

Fellows did not disappoint, throwing in the upper-80s throughout his complete game performance in which he allowed only four base hits and one walk while striking out six as he pounded the strike zone.

However, the Hitters are plenty familiar with Fellows and Elite Baseball and were able to scratch across runs in both the first and seventh innings on their way to a 2-0 win to spoil Fellows' effort.

“Those games are the best,” Lux said of he and his team's performance on Saturday afternoon. “Elite's a great team, and we love playing against them. Any chance we can get I'd take playing a team like that, and a game like that, any day.”

“It's great. They're starting to come together as a team,” Lequia added of his team's performance. “The kid out there (Fellows), he's really good. We got to him early which made the game a little easier. We got his pitch count up and got guys on base, put a little pressure on him and it ended up working out.”

Three pitchers for the hitters combined on the shutout. Starter Ryan Selner worked the first three frames and didn't allow a base hit.

“He doesn't throw anything straight,” Lequia said of his starter, who threw his fastball in the low-80s. “He kept getting ahead of hitters and limited mistakes. (His fastball has) like a natural cut. I never showed him it, and I don't know where it came from, but he has that natural cutter which is nice.”

Matt McCarty worked the next three innings with Takoda Metoxen closing the game out in the seventh, but it may have been the infield defense behind the Hitters pitchers that stood out the most in this game.

“The defense behind the guys was really great,” Lequia said. “There were no errors, we stole a couple hits, and it's nice to throw three different guys out there and they all can command the zone and succeed.”

Lux in particular played spectacular defensively, ranging seemingly effortlessly to both his left and right while routinely delivering strikes to retire baserunners on at least a half dozen plays.

“He's put in a ton of work lately,” Lequia said of his star shortstop. “He had an arm issue earlier in the year, it wasn't serious, but mentally throwing the ball was something for him, it kind of effected him. But he's put in all the work that he needed to and it shows. He made a lot of plays out there, he looked really good today.”

Lux, a lefthanded hitter listed at 6-foot-1 and 165-pounds, is built rail thin and routinely displays graceful, athletic actions on the infield. Hailing from Kenosha, Wis., Lux attends Indian Trial Academy.

He, Clementi and Watson were all members of the third place Hitters Baseball team from a year ago, with Lux garnering All-Tournament honors by going 5-for-14 (.357) and supplying several key base hits to go along with his usual rock solid defense. As he continues to improve Lux is quick to recognize the amount of work necessary for him to reach his lofty potential.

“It's mostly getting stronger,” Lux said. “Working on my consistency, working to hit the ball the other way. That's what I'm really focusing on.”

While those are his individual goals, the team comes first at tournament events such as the Kernels Foundation Championship, especially with so much on the line.

“I hope that we can keep rolling like this,” Lux added. “We played great today, we've played some really good teams, and I hope we can keep rolling like that and get down there (to Jupiter).”

So far so good for the Rawlings Hitters National Baseball Club 2016's, as they not only cemented their playoff spot with a 4-2 win over the DuPage Training Academy Wildcats on Sunday to move to 3-0, but they also secured the No. 1 overall seed. Now their attention shifts to their next game, a quarterfinal matchup at Perfect Game Field at 8:30 p.m.

“I played in this when I was a kid,” Lequia said of the importance winning this event. “I played for R.J. I remember coming out here, great tournament, there's always good talent around here. Getting a chance to go to Jupiter, it's nuts down there, that's a good place to go. So anything that gets you there is cool.”