FORT MYERS, Fla. – When Midlothian, Va.-based RISE Baseball 2017 arrived at Terry Park Monday morning for its opening game at the 17u Perfect Game BCS Finals, the players and coaches could look out over the four carefully prepared fields and see them populated with players wearing the uniform of many of the top travel ball organizations in the country, primarily from Florida and Georgia.

Over on George Brett Field was a team from the Florida-based Scorpions Baseball organization; there on Roberto Clemente Field was one from Georgia-based Team Elite. Up the way, on Connie Mack Field, there was a team from Florida’s Elite Squad program going to work, and at TP Stadium yet another Team Elite unit (they’re everywhere) was in action.

Those are organizations that have accumulated numerous PG BCS Finals and PG WWBA National Championships through the years, and to share a field with any of them can sometimes make for a humbling morning. It can also be seized as an opportunity.

“I tell the kids all the time that I don’t care if we’re playing the Yankees, the Red Sox or whoever, we’re going to go out there and compete to the best of our ability and try to win that baseball game,” RISE Baseball 2017 head coach James Beirlein told PG before he sent his team out onto Clemente Field to face, yes, the Elite Squad 17u South.

“No fear,” he said. “If you play this game with any kind of fear you’re going to struggle and you’re going to get beat. You go in there and you expect to win and you play the game the right way, and hopefully it turns out on your side.”

RISER Baseball 2017 might seem to be somewhat anonymous when in the presence of these other more nationally recognized programs, but don’t tell its coach or its players that. It is a program born and brought to life in the talent-rich Richmond, Va., area and its players take a backseat to no one.

Back in October of 2014, at the PG WWBA Underclass World Championship held here in Fort Myers, some eyebrows were raised when a couple of teams from the Richmond Metro Area met in the event’s championship game. The Virginia Cardinals and the Richmond Braves National had out-gunned all the heavy hitters from Florida and Georgia and other points north and south, east and west, and did battle for the title, which the Cardinals won.

The contention that there is very high quality high school baseball being played in east-central Virginia has never been disputed, but that championship meeting seemed to drive the point home. The three programs – The Cardinals, the Braves and RISE – are headquartered easy drives from one another and there is no shortage of talent when it comes to filling their respective rosters.

“(Its) good competition; we (build) off of each other,” Beirlein said. “We try to compete with each other and that makes it very tough, but competition in this business is what always gets you to the next level; we like competing with each other.”

One of RISE Baseball 2017’s top prospects is 2017 catcher Hunter Vay, a 17-year-old senior-to-be at Thomas Dale High School in Chester, Va., who PG ranks as a top-1,000 prospect in his class and who has committed to Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond. He has enjoyed a front-row seat to see first-hand the high level of play exhibited on the fields in and around Richmond, or “The 804” as he calls it, referring to Richmond’s area code.

“The 804 definitely has some really good baseball,” Vay said. “Those (two programs, the Braves and Cardinals) are literally on the same road as us and we see them every day; play with them every day. There are definitely some good baseball players coming out of there and the high school baseball there is insane. We’ve got kids going (to college) everywhere out of The 804.”

The RISE Baseball 2017 roster lists 16 players, with six from the class of 2017 and the other 10 from the class of 2017, which makes it a young group for a 17u event. They come from cities and towns all across the Richmond Metro Area, places with names like North Chesterfield, Amelia Court House, Charlotte Court House and Glen Allen. All of the players, even the underclassman, were contributors on their high school’s varsity team this past spring, according to Beirlein.

Vay has been with RISE Baseball for five years and he called his association with the group, “awesome.” They helped him with everything when it came to the college recruiting process, one that led him to get that scholarship offer from VCU, which he readily accepted.

R.J. Liverpool is another highly regarded prospect on the RISE Baseball 2017 roster. He is a 2017 outfielder from North Chesterfield, Va., who as a top-500 prospect in his class and is the only other RISE player mentioned in PG’s rankings. It is worth noting, however, that the 17u PG BCS Finals marks only the third time the majority of these players have gotten in front of PG scouts, with the other two opportunities coming at the 2015 16u PG EvoShield Classic in Cartersville, Ga., and the 2016 17u PG Super25 Virginias Super Qualifier in Chantilly, Va.

The RISE players and coaches were certainly looking forward to test the waters on a PG national championship stage, just to see if their experiences playing in Virginia would translate well on the fields of Southwest Florida.

“When we get the opportunity to come down to a Perfect Game (tournament) where we get a nice, week-long trip, we try to prepare for it all year long and then come down here and try to win it,” Beirlein said. “We’ve had the core-group of these guys together for three-plus years and they’ve jelled pretty well. There’s good chemistry on this team and that’s what you want for a team to be successful; we’ve got a good group of guys.”

Added Vay: “We’ve been training for this for a long time, hoping to bring home a (PG national championship) ring from it. Playing against different competition is always fun and seeing these guys (from other states) down here is always a lot of fun, too.”

The initiation didn’t go particularly well for RISE Baseball 2017, with the Elite Squad 17u South posting an 11-6 victory in a game that featured sloppy play on both sides. RISE committed three errors and its pitchers threw three wild pitches which contributed to five of Elite Squad’s 11 runs being unearned. Four Rise pitchers combined to give up five hits, nine walks and hit two batters in five innings of work, but did post six strikeouts.

The Elite Squad 17u South committed five errors that contributed to two unearned runs for RISE, which also managed seven hits. Matt Flatford went 2-for-3 with a double, two RBI and a run scored and Bryan Harris doubled and drove in a run.

The loss was not fatal for RISE Baseball 2017 since the top-two finishers in each of the 17 pools advance to the 34-team playoffs at the end of the week. Beirlein explained that the thing the RISE program emphasizes more than anything else is player development, and he and his staff will use every opportunity presented to them to further their players’ development for as long as they keep playing at the 17u PG BCS Finals.

RISE takes pride in the fact that it doesn’t only take in players who would excel no matter what uniform they put on, opting instead to take in very good players and then try to help them get even better. If that produces a win or two along away – or maybe even a championship – that’s better still.

“I just want to see them compete,” Beirlein said. “No matter what the score is or who you’re playing, you should go out there and treat the game like it’s a brand new ballgame every day. Every inning is a new inning, every pitch is a new pitch, and you play it pitch-by-pitch, batter-by-batter, inning-by-inning and just continue to compete. You never take a play off.

“You always expect to win a championship, and that’s why you play this game,” he concluded. “You want to win. Winning is a lot more fun than losing, so every time you step on the diamond and walk between those lines you’re playing to win.”