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College  | Story | 2/1/2022

Iowa Western Opens Atop PG JUCO Poll

Photo: Dylan Robertson (Travis Jacobson/Iowa Western Athletics)
Perfect Game Preseason JUCO Top 25

Rk. Team City ST 2021 Rec.
1 Iowa Western Council Bluffs IA 50-10
2 San Jacinto Houston TX 51-15
3 McLennan Waco TX 47-16
4 Crowder Neosho MO 55-8
5 LSU-Eunice Eunice LA 51-7
6 Central Arizona Coolidge AZ 51-9
7 Chipola Marianna FL 34-17
8 Johnson County Overland Park KS 43-10
9 Weatherford Weatherford TX 37-20
10 Pearl River Poplarville MS 36-9
11 Northwest Florida State Niceville FL 32-17
12 Cowley Arkansas City KS 47-10
13 Wabash Valley Mount Carmel IL 53-5
14 Walters State Morristown TN 61-7
15 Florence-Darlington Florence SC 46-8
16 Orange Coast Costa Mesa CA 20-7-1
17 John A. Logan Carterville IL 42-18
18 Florida SouthWestern Fort Myers FL 44-16
19 San Joaquin Delta Stockton CA N/A
20 Midland Midland TX 29-16
21 Pima Tucson AZ 36-14
22 State College of Florida Bradenton FL 34-21
23 Kellogg Battle Creek MI 37-13
24 Shelton State Tuscaloosa AL 40-17
25 Riverside Riverside CA N/A




Iowa Western Opens Atop PG JUCO Polls

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa -- Iowa Western is putting the finishing touches on a $4 million project on the baseball facilities, which includes a full turf field, new lights, a new outfield fence, and a new scoreboard.
 
That financial commitment is a testament to where the program is at, and how far it has come since Head Coach Marc Rardin got to campus 20 years ago.
 
It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. He never planned to be at Iowa Western this long.
 
“I was going to be here five [years]. This is year 20,” Rardin said. “It feels like five years…We’ve really built something special here. We’re always that northern team in the rankings and the World Series. We’re the northern team. I’ve always had some pride in that, that we’re on the baseball map and we’re in Council Bluffs, Iowa. It’s not ideal weather for baseball, but we’ve made it work, and I’ve always been really proud of that.”
 
Iowa Western is the northern team that since 2010 has taken home three national championships (2010, 2012, 2014) and has played in a total of 12 Junior College World Series tournaments in Rardin’s 19 years. To this point, it is still the only northern team to win a national title.
 
Now, it is that northern team ranked No. 1 in Perfect Game’s Preseason JUCO Top 25.
 
It’s impressive how far the program has come and the heights they have reached. Rardin said when he first started, his team was consistently bringing knives to a gun fight.
 
“When we won our first national championship in 2010, we had one guy who touched 90,” he said.
 
This year’s roster, in contrast, currently has 22 pitchers throwing 90 mph. That feels something like bringing a handful of bazookas to a gun fight.
 
“Times change, kids change, and I have to change,” Rardin said. “It’s adapt or die.”
 
Rardin grew up in Northeast Iowa but spent his time before taking over Iowa Western at Baylor University and Yavapai College in Arizona. He learned his style of play down in the south, and wanted to bring it with him when he moved back to his home state.
 
It’s an aggressive style, set on putting as much pressure as possible on the other team and requiring his players to be the toughest guys on the field.
 
Through a small chuckle, Rardin said he apologizes to his former players for how hard he was on them in the beginning. Really, he was setting a culture, one that has produced at levels unseen in his territory.
 
“I spent two years in Texas and three in Arizona. For those five years, I always say that’s a different brand of baseball,” Rardin said. “When I first got here, I had an idea of how I wanted to play, and it was just different than everyone else at the time. Whether it was hit and runs, automatic first-to-thirds, second-to-homes. The second part of it is that my kids were going to be really tough. My kids were going to play hard. We all say that, but someone has to actually make that happen.”
 
Last year it was second baseman Dylan Robertson making that happen in the Reiver lineup. As a freshman, Robertson hit .377 and drove in 46 runs, both marks good enough for second in the conference.
 
According to Rardin, Robertson is a classic overachiever, and it fits his personality perfectly. He walked on at Iowa Western, and simply made it impossible to keep him out of the lineup with the amount of work he put in.
 
He’s the vocal leader of the team, and will be one of the focal points in a lineup that expects to make another deep run to the World Series.
 
“He’s awesome in every way,” Rardin said about Robertson. “He walked on here and ended up getting the most at-bats on the team. All he’s continued to do is grow. He’s a hard worker, high energy, great teammate, awesome in school…His standards are high. When he talks, people listen. People want to follow him.”
 
Robertson will be joined up the middle by Trenton Harris, one of the smoothest shortstops you’ll find at the junior college level. Harris hit .317 in 82 at-bats last year. Alec Patino hit .376 in 93 at-bats last year, with an on-base percentage flirting with .500, and he’s back.
 
Then there are the newcomers. Brady Christensen is a local kid from Omaha who will play a hybrid role for Iowa Western. He can play any corner position on the field and his bat really plays at all of them. Jake Gish is another local product from just outside of Omaha. Gish transferred back home after spending time at Arkansas State, and will be a middle-of-the-order bat for the Reivers before heading to Utah next year.
 
The arms are the headline for Iowa Western, though. In any postseason tournament, your depth will be tested, and the Reivers seem to have plenty of it.
 
“The crazy thing about the arms we have is that we don’t have a lot of sporadic arms,” Rardin said. “There is some use in all these arms…We’ll go into every weekend knowing we have a chance to win.”
 
Ernie Day heads into the year as the ace of the staff. The Mississippi State signee has the ideal pitcher’s frame at 6-foot-4, 220 pounds, and struck out 47 in 32 innings a season ago.
 
Day is joined by seven other pitchers on staff who are committed to Division-I schools – Jay Watson (Arkansas Little Rock), Daniel Wright (Houston), Noah Manning (Troy), Michael Finan (Creighton), Sawyer Hansen (Incarnate Word), Evan O’Toole (Oklahoma State), and Brant Hogue (Oklahoma State).
 
The Reivers have 15 total players on the roster committed to Division-I schools, and four or five more in the pipeline, according to Rardin.
 
Position players committed include Auggie Rasmussen (Illinois State), Gish (Utah), Harris (Campbell), Robertson (Missouri State), Braden Berry (Incarnate Word), Carter Wright (Auburn), and Q Phillips (Michigan).
 
That’s really what it comes down to for Rardin. His motivation each year is to get his guys to four-year schools and give them opportunities they didn’t have coming out of high school.
 
“Whether we win the next three World Series in a row, or I never go to another World Series,” he said. “That’s my No. 1 goal.”
 
As far as what his players have in mind for this season?
 
“I know what these kids want,” he said.
 
The kids from up north want to make room in the trophy case to add another one.

College | Recruiting | 12/22/2025

Recruiting Notebook: December 22

Jheremy Brown
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Lucien Saint Cyr, INF, Class of 2026 Commitment: Bucknell Saint Cyr announced his pledge to Bucknell, giving the Bison an interesting blend of present tools and projection. Saint Cyr stands 6-foot-1 and offers room to fill in his medium frame, profiling in the middle infield defensively. The New York product starts wide at the base in the right-handed box, keeping his hands high behind the ear. He works into a subtle outward step load, firing through a compact barrel that showcases bat speed and gap-to-gap impact. For head coach Scott Heather and Bucknell, they land a high-quality Northeast infielder in the ’26 cycle, adding to a class that takes the quality over quantity approach. Patrick Diaz ('26, NY) 102 EV off the bat. Impact to the pull side. #PGNational @PGMidAtlantic @PG_Uncommitted pic.twitter.com/NN0L3FRdO9 — PG Showcases (@PGShowcases) July 9, 2025 Patrick Diaz,...
Draft | Rankings | 12/23/2025

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Juco | Story | 12/23/2025

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Draft | Story | 12/22/2025

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High School | General | 12/19/2025

Huntington Beach HS World Series Recap

Steve Fiorindo
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MVPitcher: Duncan McLeod The uncommitted junior toed the slab in three of the four games for Team Mick, tossing 3 2/3 innings.  Zero walks, zero hits and 6 punchouts for the lefty who was used both as a starter in the series clinching game 4 and he closed out game 3 on Friday in quick fashion.  McLeod was very efficient as well, needing just 42 pitches over all his outings.  In the game 4 start, over two innings he punched out 3, with one strikeout with all of his offerings.  The mid 80’s fastball regularly played up, set up with efficient use of the secondaries, with the breaking ball 73/74 and fading change-up 72-74.   Owen Bone (2026) at it again... Solo shot in the 5th to tie things up. Back to back days with a home run for Bone. #PGHS pic.twitter.com/2JC9qETI5h — Perfect Game California (@California_PG) December 13, 2025 MV Hitter: ...
Tournaments | Story | 12/19/2025

13u Tourney All-American Team

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What a year it was in 2025 on the national landscape at the 13u level as Perfect Game continues to expand its reach around the country, providing an even bigger schedule of events coast-to-coast which has allowed players all over show out and gain their deserved recognition. Whether in Texas for the Houston 1000 or the 13u WWBA in West Palm Beach, we saw huge, eye opening performances from the players placed below, knowing that we could EASILY build a third team and likely a fourth without much effort.  As we do every year with this exercise, it's worth pointing out the trickiness of this age group and putting the teams together with the 13u group. While the players are all members of the Class of 2030, some are younger for the grade, which allowed them to play at the 12u level where's it's a smaller field, shorter mound distance and different bats, so we'll separate them out and...
Tournaments | Story | 12/18/2025

14u Tourney All-American Team

Tyler Russo
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Player of the Year: Asher Williams It was an incredible year for Williams that was rewarded with a trip to the 14U Select Fest, before some more impressive play in the fall. He came to the plate almost 250 times in PG tournaments throughout 2025 and reached base in well over half of them, hitting to a .500 AVG while slugging a 14U circuit best 12 bombs and driving in 113 runs. The numbers on the surface are ridiculous, but when you look at the high-level events he put them up in, it makes it even more impressive. Pitcher of the Year: Tristan Blalock Blalock earns this honor after a dominant 2025 where he struck out 85 batters in just 48.2 innings of work with a minuscule 1.58 ERA. This included several strong performances at many national level tournaments and showcases where he was able to bully some of the best hitters in the country. It’s hard not to fall in love with...
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While we are nearing the turn of the calendar to the 2026 year, that means we are just inching closer to the beginning of the season for many high school players and college baseball is on the horizon. We are prepping for a reshuffle of the 2026 MLB Draft Board as well here amongst the PG Draft staff. But before we get to that, we sat down and have each picked a couple of players who are in the mix to get selected in a couple of different buckets.  We have prospects who could go into the Top 30 picks or so, prospects who could be selected in the Top 5 rounds, and prospects who could go inside of the Top 10 rounds. With the draft quite far down the road and a lot of re-shuffling to be done as these players play themselves into certain spots on the draft board, our scouts picked some players who fit into these “buckets” who are gut-feel guys. These are the guys that our PG...
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Jason Phillips
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Hitter of the Year: Landon Bonner The 2028 class saw many players from across the country take the next step in their development as they entered the High School ranks. There were huge performances from highly ranked players on the PG circuit as well as some under-the-radar guys who burst onto the scene. Landon Bonner came into Sophomore National as a Top 500 ranked player and after an impressive showing, left with all eyes on him as a rankings riser in the class. The left-handed hitting shortstop from The Colony, Texas, had a summer to remember with All-Tournament Team selections in three of his next four events culminating with a historic performance at the 2025 PG 15U WWBA National Championship. The Hebron High School prep went 20-for-24 in nine games for 5 Star Mafia 15U Black with four homeruns and 12 runs batted in. He also scored 17 runs and finished with a mind-boggling 2.500...
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16u Tourney All-American Team

AJ Denny
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Hitter of the Year: Koa Romero is the Hitter of the Year for the 16u group, as he would come to every premier event of the summer and earn All-Tournament honors (Beast of the East, 16/17u WWBA, Jupiter) in every single one. Over 82 plate appearances, Romero would pump ten homeruns with forty two RBI and sixteen walks, good for a .378 average and 1.339 OPS. The performance on volume at the best events of the year pushed Romero over the edge here, as he’d hit a pair of homeruns in Jupiter (one of them at 112 EV) as an underclassmen and collect double digit hits in BOTH WWBA events with a combined six jacks over the two tournaments. It was a summer that combined performance and winning on the biggest stages for Romero. It’s a quiet left-handed swing that packs a punch. He would reap the benefits of his performances, earning a commitment to LSU and jumping to the #74 prospect in...
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