FORT MYERS, Fla. – When the mid-morning sun found its place high in the sky over the backfields at the jetBlue Park Player Development Complex on Friday, its rays shined down on the last four teams standing at this year’s 14u Perfect Game BCS National Championship.

Over on Field 4, the Sarasota, Fla.-based Florida Burn Platinum North (No. 1 seed, 6-1-0) were getting ready to face the Winder, Ga.-based Team Elite 14u Nation (No. 5, 7-1-0). Next door on Field 5, the Knoxville, Tenn.-based Tennessee Nationals (No. 3, 8-0-0) were ready to enter the fray against the Columbia, S.C.-based Swingman Baseball SC 14u (No. 7, 6-2-0).

All four teams had played well enough to reach the 14u PG BCS semifinals, but now needed to dig deep into their energy reserves – what was left of them – to try to pull one more win out of their equipment bags and advance to Saturday morning’s championship game at the jetBlue Park stadium.

These four teams were about to play either their ninth or 10^th games since the 14u PG BCS opened on Sunday, but that wasn’t the half of it. All four had also played at the 14u PG WWBA National Championship at PG Park South-LakePoint in Emerson, Ga., last week, and were winding up a brutal two-week stretch of mostly non-stop baseball.

This Team Elite 14u Nation team really had the pedal to the metal over the last two weeks after playing 10 games in seven days while reaching the final-four at the 14u PG WWBA. In fact, they played their last game in Georgia last Friday and their first game here on Sunday.

“It was really tough pitching-wise for us, but we were able to work hard and have good team victories through the first few (pool-play) games, and we were able to set our pitching up pretty well for the rest of the tournament,” head coach Mitch Pittman told PG Friday morning. “Hopefully, it can keep working out for us the rest of the way.”

It couldn’t have worked out any better for the Team Elite 14u Nation on Friday. They buried the Burn Platinum North, 13-0 in five innings, saving their pitching staff two valuable innings of work in the process. On the other field, the Tennessee Nationals got past Swingman Baseball SC 14u, 5-3.

That means the Nationals (9-0-0) will face the Nation (8-1-0) in Saturday’s championship game. The players and coaches are hot and they’re tired and they’re probably ready for a break, but it would be worth betting a steaming plate of Florida Gulf Coast shrimp on the fact that they’ll be ready to go.

“We’ve just got to go out and play the game,” Pittman said. “We’ve got to throw the ball across the plate and catch the baseball and get some hits. Our offense has been our go-to weapon all year – we score a lot of runs – and these guys usually have a pretty good approach offensively. Pitching-wise … we have a pretty deep staff, and I like our chances (on Saturday).”

That’s exactly how Tennessee Nationals head coach Chris Goodrich sees things playing out:

“It’s just great to see all of our guys peaking and playing great baseball at the right time,” he said Friday morning. “A big key to our success this week is defensively we’ve played incredible baseball … and we’re hitting the crap out of the baseball, too. Offensively, we’re playing about as well as we’ve played all year, and if we continue to swing the sticks like we have been doing, we’re going to be in good shape.”

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WHEN THE DIRECTORS AND COACHES AT THE TENNESSEE NATIONALS organization began mapping out their 2017 summer schedule, they dedicated themselves to playing in as many high-profile Perfect Game tournaments as possible; they’ve done just that.

The Nationals were at the 14u PG WWBA Memorial Day Classic at LakePoint, the 14u Perfect Game-East Cobb Invitational and the 14u PG WWBA National Championship before arriving at the 14u PG BCS National Championship, and have compiled a combined record of 19-3-1; that includes 6-1-0 at the 14u PG WWBA and their 9-0-0 mark at the 14u PG BCS.

“We won a lot of games even when we haven’t played our best baseball, so it’s fun to be playing our best baseball and still be winning baseball games, too,” said Goodrich, who serves as an assistant coach at Farragut (Tenn.) High School.

“It’s been an adjustment just from a competition perspective, with the kids believing in themselves and believing that we belong here, and I think that we’ve finally come to that point.”

Tennessee beat the No. 14 Elite Squad Prime, 3-0, in the first round of the playoffs and then got past the No. 6 Phenom Texas 14u, 4-3, in the quarterfinals. Goodrich called those two wins his team’s two biggest of the summer.

“At the beginning of the season we kind of pointed towards this tournament and the WWBA last week as our two biggest tournaments; we wanted to peak at the right time and that’s what we’re doing,” he said.

On Friday, the Nationals were going up against a Swingman Baseball team under the direction of head coach Billy Sylvester, a guy who enjoyed a 10-year career in the minor leagues and is the head coach at Johnsonville (S.C.) High School. The Swingman Baseball SC program is in its first summer of operation, and fields teams in the 11u through 16u age-groups. Sylvester said he enjoys working with these 14-year-olds

“I didn’t know if I would at first, but I do like it,” he said. “They’re mature but they’ve still got a lot of baseball to learn, and there’s something that comes up every inning that we get to teach these kids. It’s good when you see the light bulb turn on, and they get it and they get to execute it in a game.”

The Swingmen had to complete – and win – their sixth pool-play game the first thing Thursday morning before they could even get into bracket-play. Once there, they beat the No. 10 New York Storm, 8-0, before handling the No. 2 Cincinnati Spikes, 15-9.

“(On Thursday) we played three games back-to-back-back and the guys played hard and we won all three, so that gave us a chance to play in the semifinals,” Sylvester said. “That’s the reason they’re doing this, is to learn how it’s going to be once they get to high school and past high school.

“They’re learning the work they have to put in … and getting the right sleep and getting the right (food), and it’s a process,” he continued. “It’s teaching them when they do get to that next level how they’re going to have to conduct themselves and be ready to get up and play the game.”

The Swingmen reached the semifinals the old-fashioned way but using their speed to score a lot of runs, and by playing small-ball when necessary – and it is often necessary at the 14u level. They basically went into every game with the idea of putting the ball in play and then running the bases to their heart’s content. They were also solid defensively, according to Sylvester, by making most of the plays they needed to make and not giving the opposing team any extra outs.

All the scoring in the 4-3 semifinal game was done in the first three innings, with the Swingmen plating two in the top of the first and one in the second, and the Nationals pushing across two in the bottom of the first and one each in the second and third.

The Tennessee Nationals totaled four hits and David A. Coleman had two of them; Walker Trusley and Derek McCarley each drove in runs. The Swingman Baseball SC 14u’s could muster only three hits, and Keyshawn McDonald had one of them, while also driving in a run and scoring another; Connor Strickland singled and drove in a run.

2021 Nationals left-handers Brycen Denton and Hunter Merrick combined on the three-hitter, with Merrick working the final 5 2/3 innings in relief; he allowed one hit, struck out three and walked two.

“Anytime you play in a tournament as big as this, you’re going to face some difficult times and some adversity; it’s going to happen and then it’s how the kids are going to respond to that,” Goodrich said. “We carry 14 on our roster and none of them are (pitcher-only) – they’re all players – and they’ve understood their role on the team and picking up each other and being good teammates; just all the intangibles that go along with being a baseball team.”

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THE TEAM ELITE 14U NATION NOT ONLY MADE ITS DEEP RUN AT THE 14U WWBA (they finished 8-2-0) before they arrived in Southwest Florida but they, too, were at the 14u PG-EC Invitational in early June and finished as runner-up with a 5-1-0 record. That gives the Elite 14u Nation an overall mark of 20-4 at PG tournaments this summer, counting their 7-1-0 record here this week.

“We’ve talked to these guys just constantly that ultimately, at the end of the day, we play this game because our goal is to play professional baseball, and it’s a grind,” Pittman said. “We’ve been playing about every single day for the last 14 days, and we’ll go home and we’ll rest for five or six and then we’ll pick it right back up at the 15u WWBA.”

Pittman, who works in the Athletic Development department of the Team Elite organization, is proud to be part of such a successful program – Team Elite 15u Prime won the 15u PG BCS National Championship on Thursday – and he knows his young players feel the same way.

He was also fully aware of who they were facing in this semifinal contest, an equally proud team from an equally proud organization, Florida Burn Baseball.

Burn Platinum North head coach Brenden Curcio has been an assistant at Venice (Fla.) High School to head coach Craig Faulker for more than 20 years, and has coached alongside Faulkner and Florida Burn Baseball founder Mark Guthrie since the organization was founded in 2010.

“I’ve been blessed to sit next to the best and learn from the best and I’m just fortunate that they’ve given me the opportunity to coach such a great group of young men,” Curcio said Friday morning. “I’ve had some of these kids since they were little so I’ve gotten to watch the kind of develop, and the guys we’ve added … have just been great assets to our program.”

After finishing pool-play with a 5-1-0 record, the Elite 14u Nation knocked off the No. 12 CF Outlaws Red, 12-5, in a first-round playoff matchup and then popped No. 4 CFL USA Elite, 9-3, in the quarterfinals.

The Burn also went 5-1-0 during pool-play, got a first-round bye thanks to its No. 1 seed and then beat the No. 8 Team Mizuno Runbirds in the quarters.

“They play really, really well as a team,” Curcio said of his group. “Our team chemistry has probably been our biggest asset, that and their ability to overcome a lot of adversity. We’ve played some phenomenal teams with some phenomenal players and coaches … and I think they’ve done an exceptional job of learning how to overcome some adversity and play the game and stay focused.”

Team Elite 14u Nation scored its 13 semifinal game runs on 16 hits, and managed to score those 13 runs and collect those 16 hits in five innings.

No. 4-ranked 2021 Grant Taylor, No. 21 2021 Brady House, Kenneth Mallory Jr., Jeffery Waters and Ayden Digiacomo all had two hits apiece; Taylor doubled and homered and drove in four runs, House singled and tripled, Waters singled and doubled and drove in two, Digiacomo singled and doubled and drove in a run and Mallory singled twice with an RBI.

Mallory Jr. was also brilliant on the mound, tossing a five-inning one-hit shutout, with two strikeouts and three walks.

“We expect to win,” Pittman said. “We have a talented group and we never come out thinking that we’re going to fail. We put high expectations on these kids and they’re all a really good group of baseball players with high baseball IQ’s and they want to just come out here and compete. We put a lot of pressure on these guys to just compete and win, and they’ve met the challenge so far this year.”