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PG Select Baseball Festival  | General  | 8/28/2018

Growing the game

Bryan Cooney     
Photo: Loreto Siniscalchi (Perfect Game)

Trio returns to PG Festival | 14u PG Select Roster Reveal | 14u PG Select Event Page

FORT MYERS, Fla. – The efforts of Perfect Game to identify the top players across the U.S. and its neighboring countries for this year’s 14u PG Select Baseball Festival took PG personnel all over the map this summer to unearth up-and-coming talents. The gathering of the 44 players in the third year of the event that benefits the Golisano Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida features a crop of players that have already accomplished so much in their baseball lives and it’s a chance for them to compete against their peers on a higher level to continue their pursuit of reaching their potential.

This year the Festival welcomes its first participants from the Bahamas, outfielder Andre Arthur (2022, Nassau, Bahamas), and Canada, righthanded pitcher Loreto Siniscalchi (2021, Burnaby, B.C.), who are both on the roster for Team Gordon, named for three-time all-star pitcher Tom Gordon. With each player competing with a top summer team (Arthur plays for Elite Squad, Siniscalchi with the Langley Blaze), finding players from different parts of the world has become easier with the vast network of summer organizations competing against one another each summer and fall at prestigious Perfect Game tournaments.

Perfect Game’s Jheremy Brown attributes the addition of PG’s six regional showcases in Florida, Georgia, New York, Texas, California and Illinois, in addition to the growing number of tournament events throughout this past spring and summer, as an opportunity to tag promising players in the midst of competitive play. Bringing top performers from the regional showcase to the 14u National Showcase in August to play alongside each other was a determining factor for a bulk of the two 22-man rosters.

“The regional showcases helped us expand our 14u reach, digging deeper into the regions and helping us create a bigger database of players,” Brown said. “We want to make sure we have the best 14u players at JetBlue Park, and wherever that may take us to find them, we’ll go there.”

The rise of talent in the 14u ranks has been easier to identify with the effort of Perfect Game’s scouting department going far and wide to find the next wave of players that could go on to success at the collegiate and professional ranks. Numerous Perfect Game national scouting coordinators have continued to do outstanding work in not only identifying players at the 14u level, but across all age groups in the effort to form prospect lists for colleges to take note of when it comes to recruiting.

For the 14u age group, suiting up for a college is still in the distance, but among the 44 players in the Festival in 2018, 15 players have commitments to Division I programs already. As these players continue to develop, experiences such as the Festival only encourage the participants to work even harder against one another to raise their game to a new level.

With Perfect Game’s effort to bring in more players from outside of the U.S. to events such as the Festival, other events such as the PG Series have seen great success in introducing new countries to the Perfect Game experience.

Last summer, teams from the Czech Republic and Aruba ventured to the Series events for the first time, and in 2018, a team from the Bahamas played in the Sophomore Series. PG’s expansion to hosting its first-ever event in Europe this past summer with the PG European Classic at the 12u and 15u levels, with players from the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Belarus and Hungary getting to participate, was a huge success. The European Classic will return next summer with the hopes of even more countries being in attendance and possibly open doors for more Perfect Game events to be conducted overseas in the years to come.

With the growth of the game as strong as ever at the 14u level and an increase in participation for countries where baseball is on the rise, Perfect Game’s Ben Ford has his eyes on continuing to make the Festival more inclusive for players outside of the U.S.

“By finding the best players in North America for this event, it helps others strive for that goal,” Ford said. “We are scouring all areas of the globe as much as we can to find the most talented players and give them the platform to show their abilities. As this continues to grow at this age, our hope is to some day have a player from Europe or Africa be a part of the Festival.

“It’s what Perfect Game’s mission is, to grow the game of baseball.”
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