FORT MYERS, Fla. – The majority of the 36 teams competing at this week’s 13u Perfect Game BCS Finals national championship tournament arrived here from states east of the Mississippi River, although there is a strong contingent of 10 squads who meandered over from Texas. And it’s worth noting that the last four champions or co-champions since 2013 have all come from the Longhorn State.
To no one’s surprise, the majority of the entrants came from Florida and Georgia, and that has just as much to do with the number of quality 13u teams that call those two states home as it does with their proximity to Southwest Florida.
As the 5th annual 13u PG BCS Finals completed the third day of its seven-day run Sunday, with games played at the Player Development 5-Plex and the CenturyLink Sports Complex, it was interesting to take note of another part of the country that has always been pretty well-represented at the event. Annually, it seems, the Northeast sends a half-dozen or so teams here and they always seem to be able to do more than hold their own.
One of the five teams that came down from the states of Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania this year is the aptly named US Elite East NJ/NY, which actually identifies both Palmyra, Pa., and Teaneck, N.J., as bases of operation; the 14-player squad is here not only playing, but playing hard, under the direction of head coach August Samek.
“We definitely look to compete no matter we go, and PG definitely brings in a lot of the top teams in the country. We want to see the best; that’s the only way you get better,” Samek said on an already hot and steamy Sunday morning from one of the fields at the CentryLink Complex, the spring training home of the Minnesota Twins. “These kids are very excited and they’re pumped to play again today. We’re going to put it all the field and look to compete.”
This team does quite a bit of traveling but usually doesn’t venture more than a 3- or 4-hour drive from home. The trip to the 13u PG BCS Finals offers the kids a little something extra.
“This was our first flight out (of the Northeast), although there were some families that decided to drive down,” Samek said. “Coming down here was one of our biggest steps of the season. It’s just exciting to be able to see different players from across the country, and actually from around the world.”
USEE NJ/NY went into Sunday’s pool-play game against the Alamo, Texas-based South Texas Banditos with a 2-0 mark, having beaten SBO 13u (West Palm Beach, Fla.) and the Houston (Texas) Athletics-Gold by a combined count of 9-1 in its first two games; the Banditos also came into the game 2-0.
The South Texas Banditos are an international team, with five players from the Mexican cities of Apodaca, Nueva Laredo, Guadalupe and Ensenada on their roster. They include a 2020 by the name of Roberto Garza from Apodaca, Nueva Leon, who in three games slashed .556/.600/1.000) with four doubles among his five hits; he had five RBI and scored five runs. The Banditos chipped away and beat US Elite East NJ/NY, 3-1, Sunday morning.
The Northeasterns struggled at the plate in their first three games, scoring 10 runs while hitting .250 as a team; only six of their 17 hits went for extra-bases. 2021 outfielder Jack Giovenco from Allentown, Pa., made only two plate appearances but managed to slap a single in one of them and has a team-high two RBI.
The pitching, on the other hand, has been stellar, save for the three earned runs allowed in Sunday’s loss. In victories Friday and Saturday, four pitchers combined to throw 11, one-hit innings without giving up an earned run, with 10 strikeouts and five walks. 2021 right-hander Nick Graham from Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., threw four innings of one-hit, shutout ball and 2020 right-hander Gavin Abrams from Metuchen, N.J., pitched two innings of perfect relief, striking out five of the six batters he faced.
The pool-play loss is not fatal to US Elite East NJ/NY’s playoff hopes. The tournament field was divided into three pools of six teams and two pools of eight teams. The top-two finishers from each six-team pool and the top-three from both eight-team pools advance to the 12-team playoffs, which begin Wednesday morning at Terry Park. If USEE NJ/NY wins its two remaining pool-play games Monday and Tuesday, it would be assured of at least a runner-up finish.
US Elite Baseball was founded in 2006 by Pennsylvania businessman Mark Helsel, who started out with just one 13u team made up of youngsters who were serious about continuing their baseball career on into their college years. The organization fields eight teams in age-groups 12u through 16u this summer.
Samek, who is originally from Montreal, Canada, where he was a standout four-sport athlete in high school – football, baseball, basketball and track and field – and played football at the University of Hawaii, is the Director of US Baseball East, and coaches this one 13u team. He first assembled this group in November and spent the ensuing months working on their baseball skills while starting the whole process of getting the young players groomed for the college game.
The roster consists of class of 2020 and 2021 prospects from cities and towns such as Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., Bellefonte, Pa., and Staten Island, N.Y. The players are hand-picked, brought together under the US Elite East umbrella and then work hard to become one, big cohesive unit.
“The kids that we’ve chosen they sleep, they dream – they want this bad,” Samek said of his players’ aspirations to one-day play baseball at the college level or beyond. “I always say the sky’s the limit and you’re going to want to work hard. You have to push them to their ultimate goal and our biggest goal right now is these kids want to play in college. They love this sport and they work hard outside the sport, as well.”
Building off his own experiences as a standout four-sport athlete, Samek – who earned a degree in exercise science and is a personal trainer with his own performance training center – wants all of his players to be well-rounded.
“I’m a big believer in kids cross-training,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot of kids – stud players – who burn out. My whole thing today is when I tell these kids to play this baseball game, you are a football player on the field. You need to be aggressive toward the ball, you need to attack the bases; it’s all the same concept. You have to have that football mentality on the baseball field, and that’s how we train.”
In just a few days’ time, these young guys from New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania will make the return trip home, and their counterparts from Texas, Georgia, Delaware, Illinois, Georgia and elsewhere will do the same. Samek will leave hoping he has done his job in a mentorship role and any efforts he’s made toward trying to help these fine young boys become even better young men won’t be wasted.
“I believe in the life lessons these guys will learn,” he said. “It’s how you carry yourself on the field, how you talk to an umpire and how respect your teammates as your brothers. The thing is, the life lesson here is that no one is any better than anybody else; you beat yourself.
“You’ve got to earn things in life and by earning things in life great things will happen, but there are different levels for everybody,” he concluded.” As long as you give 110-percent and be the best that you can be as a person, that is what will make you a respectable person in your life.”