15u PG BCS Finals championship goes to Chain National

FORT MYERS, Fla. – His was a performance that screamed “MOST VALUABLE PITCHER” even before Chain National’s somewhat smallish pitching phenom was asked on Thursday afternoon to go out and save the day.

Anyone paying attention was aware of the eye-popping, video game numbers 2018 right-hander William Bowdoin had already posted in three previous appearances at the 15u PG BCS Finals national championship, but this is a “what have you done for me lately” world we live in.

And besides, these were the late innings of the championship game at the 15u PG BCS Finals. This was for individual PG national championship rings and more importantly a team trophy that Chain National could proudly display back home in Warner Robins, Ga.

Bowdoin, a 5-foot-7, 145-pound switch-hitting right-handed pitcher from St. Simons Island, Ga., had already worked 11 1/3 innings in three appearances over the previous six days, but he gladly accepted the ball from Chain National head coach Aaron Dobbs with the championship on the line He then delivered 2 2/3, no-hit, shutout innings in Chain’s tense 5-4 victory over the East Cobb Astros at steamy Hammond Stadium.

“This has been amazing; it’s been a great experience,” Bowdoin said. “I love coming down here and playing baseball with a new team; it’s been great. I felt confident every time I went out there.”

The shutdown performance by Bowdoin to end what had been a back-and-forth title game with East Cobb was a perfect capper for Chain National. It had earned the No. 1 seed in the playoffs after dominating pool-play, and with semifinal and championship wins Thursday, the Nationals completed their stay at the 15u BCS with a perfect 9-0 record.

“We were the team to beat in the tournament; I knew that coming in,” Dobbs said. “East Cobb is good – they’re always going to have a solid team – but things have changed a little bit lately. I would say we took care of business and we did exactly what we should have done.”

Chain National jumped to an early lead by posting two runs in the bottom of the first but that proved to be just the beginning of an affair that worked under the rules of, “If you push me, I’ll push right back.” The Astros responded with three in the top of second and the Nationals came back with two of their own in the bottom of the frame to take a 4-3 lead.

The No. 6-seeded East Cobb Astros (8-1-0) from Marietta, Ga., tied it with a run in the top of the fifth but Chain scored what would prove to be the winning run in the bottom of the fifth on the strength of a hit batsmen, a walk and a throwing error.

Bowdoin came on with one out in the fifth and went to work stymying the Astros. In the top of the seventh, he issued a lead-off walk to Lyndon Weaver, who soon found himself on third base with no one out after he successfully stole second and advanced on an errant throw.

Bowdoin then struck out the next two Astros he faced before Weaver was called out on a very close play while attempting to steal home with the tying run.

Three of Chain National’s five runs in the championship were earned and it managed just five hits off of four Astros pitchers; Brandon Howlett drove in a run with a sac fly and Jonathan Alonso had an RBI single. All four of the Astros’ runs were earned, coming on six hits, including doubles from James Parris and Mickey Skole, who finished with two RBI; Jarrett Ford had a pair of singles.

The Most Valuable Pitcher Award was a formality after Bowdoin finished the tournament with this line: 3-0 in four appearances, one earned run on seven hits in 14 innings pitched (0.50 ERA) with 26 strikeouts and one walk – his seventh inning walk to Weaver in the championship game was his only one all week. He also hit .438 (7-for-16) with two doubles, a triple, four RBI and three runs.

“We’re hard-workers and we do the little things right,” Bowdoin said of the team he helped carry. “That’s what wins ballgames for us, the little things.”

Chain National’s Beau Walters, a 5-foot-11, 205-pound 2018 third baseman/outfielder from Clermont, Fla., was named the Most Valuable Player after batting 8-for-20 (.400) with three home runs, a double, nine RBI and six runs scored while posting a 1.471 OPS.

“I think in the last six games we had three walk-off wins in the seventh inning where we pulled through,” Walters said. “We just played Chain baseball; that’s all I can say. We had a lot of confidence coming into this tournament … and we were expecting to win. We did what we could and it came out OK.”

This Chain National 15u team is a relatively new group in terms of the time the players have been together. Roster spots are filled with young prospects primarily from Georgia and Florida with others joining from Alabama, Texas and North Carolina. The team became a melting pot almost immediately, with the players calling themselves best friends within days of meeting one another.

Dobbs has been with Chain Baseball for three years and has worked with the 15u group his entire time with the organization. A former player at Kennesaw State, he feels thankful and blessed to have the responsibility, especially with this diverse group.

“There’s really nobody the same throughout the team any way you cut it, but they came together in such a short amount of time,” Dobbs said. “That’s what makes them so special to me is that they were able to come together and keep their composure through everything.”

Levin Lackey delivered a two-out single in the bottom of the sixth inning that drove in what proved to be the winning run, and the East Cobb Astros escaped the No. 10 Central Florida Gators (7-2-0) from Altamonte Springs, 6-5, in one of the 15u semifinal games Thursday afternoon.

The Astros led 3-1 at the end of one inning of play and 5-1 after, but the Gators scored a pair in the top of third and tied it at 5 with two more in the top of the fifth. The game was still knotted at five before Lackey’s sixth-inning heroics.

Charles Gibson joined Lackey by going 2-for-3 with an RBI, and Jared Hart and Ryan Glass also drove in runs for East Cobb. Central Florida had 12 hits, including four doubles, but left eight runners on base. Connor Ollio was 3-for-4 with a double and three RBI, and Elijah Cabell and Mason Denaburg each doubled and drove in a run for the Gators.

Chain National reached the championship game by virtue of a 4-3 walk-off win over No. 4 Team Elite Louisville Slugger 15u in the other semifinal. Toby Rumfield hit a two-out single in the bottom of the seventh to get things started and was replaced by courtesy runner Abel Diaz. Hueston Morril walked and the two were soon sitting on second and third before Diaz scored the winning run on Team Elite LS 15u fielding error.

“This team right here faced adversity the whole tournament and pretty much all summer long; we’ve had some things go wrong,” Dobbs said. “This is the most talented, unselfish group that I’ve ever been around and I’m very thankful and blessed to be able to coach them. They always say that great players make great coaches, so I guess I’m just going to take that one with me.

“You’ve got to stay at it and you’ve got to stay in it pretty much every inning of every game, and they did. When things didn’t go their way they never gave up; they did everything us coaches asked of them.”


2015 15u BCS Finals runnerup: East Cobb Astros



2015 15u BCS Finals MVP: Beau Walters, Chain National



2015 15u BCS Final MV-Pitcher: William Bowdoin, Chain National

Bombers outlast Banditos for 13u PG BCS Finals crown

FORT MYERS, Fla. – Even though the 13u Banditos team sitting in the opposing dugout had a different constituency from those Texas Bombers Elite head coach Lale Esquvel was used to seeing in Houston, he wasn’t about to be fooled.

Esquvel has been around long enough to know that if they walk like Banditos, talk like Banditos and play ball like Banditos, there’s a good chance this a group of Banditos. Especially when Houston Banditos founder/owner/head coach Ray DeLeon is also sitting in that opposing dugout.

The team the Texas Bombers Elite faced in Thursday afternoon’s championship game of the 13u PG BCS Finals at the CenturyLink Sports Complex was playing under the MVP Banditos name and was made up primarily of young home-schooled kids from Miami, Fla. The Bombers, from Grapevine, Tex., saw through the clever disguise.

“(The Banditos) have a big name, they’ve been around for a long time and they’ve won a lot of championships,” Esquvel said Thursday. “Our guys were talking about it and I tried to tell them, ‘Hey look, they’ve got to hit the ball just like we do.’”

Victor Mederos hit a two-out, two-run, pop-fly single to right field and Jorge Figueroa added a two-out RBI single in a three-run top of the seventh inning to break open a 5-5 tie, and the Texas Bombers Elite held on to beat the MVP Banditos, 8-6, in the title game played at Hammond Stadium.

The No. 4-seeded Bombers Elite (8-0-0) finished off an electric run to their first PG BCS Finals national championship with the back-and-forth victory over the No. 3 Banditos (7-1-0). MVP led 2-0 after an inning of play but TBE scored one in the third, two in the fourth and two more in the fifth to take a 5-2 lead. The Banditos put up a three-spot in the bottom of the fifth to tie the score at 5, leading to the Bombers Elite’s seventh-inning rally.

The Banditos scored one run in the bottom of the seventh and had the tying run second with one out, but Bombers 2020 right-hander struck out two of the last three batters he faced to earn the save.

Mederos was 3-for-4 with a double and three RBI in the title tilt and Edison Ramos had a pair of doubles, drove in a run and scored two more; Yanluis Ortiz hit a solo home run and was intentionally walked twice.

The Banditos were led in the championship game by Maurice Hampton, who was 2-for-4 with a towering two-run home run and drove in three; Zane Keener was 2-for-2 with two walks and scored twice; Rodger Vasquez was 1-for-3 with two RBI.

The Bombers hit .401 as a team in their eight games and eight players who played in at least seven games hit .409 or better. Ortiz, a 2020 third baseman from Southlake, Tex., finished 10-for-21 (.476) with two doubles, two home runs, eight RBI, eight runs and 1.434 OPS and was named the Most Valuable Player.

Ramos was 13-for-23 (.565) with four doubles, a triple, three RBI and 10 runs; Mederos finished 9-for-21 (.429) with three doubles, a home run, six RBI and seven runs.

Hitting was also a constant for the Banditos, who batted .330 as a team in their eight games. Keener was 7-for-13 (.538) with two doubles, two triples, eight RBI, eight runs, five walks and a .667 on-base percentage. Hampton finished 8-for-22 (.364) with a triple a home run, 11 RBI and 10 runs scored.

Banditos 2020 left-hander Chase Lablanc from Miami was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Pitcher. He worked 11 innings over three appearances and finished 2-0 with a 1.27 ERA; he gave up 10 hits, struck out 14 and walked six.

The longest serving members of the Texas Bombers Elite roster have been with Esquvel for the last two or three years and have really started playing well together. “They work hard at practice every day and they do all the right things that need to be done,” he said.

They finished 5-0 in pool play but could no better than the No. 4 seed after outscoring its five foes 35-16. They seemed to improve as the days went by.

“To be honest, they started out real slow but as we went on they kind of got used to the heat – the heat is tough down here – and every day they seemed to get better and better and stronger and stronger,” Esquvel said. “Today proved that to be true – we won two big games.”

The Bombers Elite scored 11 earned runs on 12 hits in just four innings and snowballed the No. 9 Houston (Tex.) Athletics (5-2-1), 11-1. in one of the 13u semifinals Thursday morning at the CenturyLink Complex. The Bombers enjoyed a four-run bottom of the first to set the inevitable in motion, added a single run in the second and three each in the third and fourth to win by the 10-run mercy rule.

Mederos had three hits including a three-run home run in the bottom of the fourth. Figueroa tripled and drove in three runs, Colby Jost tripled and drove in a pair and Ortiz was 2-for-2 with a double, RBI and a run scored for Texas. DeGrate allowed one earned run on one hit, striking out four and walking five, to pick up the win.

Albert Hernandez stroked a run-scoring triple in the bottom of the fifth to give the MVP Bandits a 10-2 lead which was good enough to meet the eight-runs-after-five rule, and the Bandits knocked off Nod. 10 SCORE International 13u (5-3-0) out of Tampa by that 10-2 count in the other semifinal.

The Bandits’ Keener tripled and drove in two runs, Coby Mayo singled and drove in two and Lablanc was 2-for-2 with a double, an RBI and run scored as part of MVP’s nine-hit attack. Lablanc allowed one earned run during a five-inning three-hitter, striking out six and walking two. Michael Blackwood singled twice to account for two of SCORE’s three hits and also drove in both runs.

At the end of the day, the Texas Bombers elite were able to use the entire experience the 13u PG BCS Finals national championship offered to push them over the top.

“It was a lot of things, to be honest with you,” Esquvel said. “These are beautiful facilities, and everything (Perfect Game) provides for the whole tournament, it’s just VIP all the way. Every time we came out it seemed like it got better and better and it was a great, perfect tournament – as the name (implies).”


2015 13u BCS Finals champions: Texas Bombers Elite



2015 13u BCS Finals runnerup: MVP Banditos



2015 13u BCS Finals MVP: Yanluis Ortiz, Texas Bombers Elite



2015 13u BCS Final MV-Pitcher: Chase Lablanc, MVP Banditos