CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – Each year, thousands of teams at every age group from all across the nation strive to win Perfect Game national tournament championships. This summer, a team wearing the Perfect Game name won a national tournament of its own.
The Cedar Rapids-based Perfect Game 11 & Under team won the USSSA Baseball 11 & Under Open World Series-International, held July 29 through Aug. 5 in Crystal Lake, Ill.
The USSSA championship capped a season in which the Perfect Game 11u team – playing in the USSSA’s 11 & Under Major classification – finished with a 33-7 and four other tournament championships.
The Perfect Game 11s won the Kick-Off Classic NIT, the Quad City Hitmen Classic and the Clinton Comet Classic – all Global Sports Qualifiers – in April and May, and the Quad City Slugfest in June. They also finished second in the prestigious Memorial Day SUPER NIT in Kansas City, Mo., in May.
“The advantage we have over other teams in the state is, for the most part, we’ve got kids that basically all they want to do all summer long is play baseball,” team manager Bob Clark said. “If you can’t choose those kids as 11-year-olds, you’re just going to have somebody out there picking dandelions.
“For the most part, all of those kids want to be here and obviously we were very successful and had a great season, but every one of them would have kept playing the next weekend – they weren’t ready to quit playing.”
Each of the 20 teams that qualified for the USSSA World Series-International tournament played five pool-play games over the first three days of the tournament and the teams that weren’t commuting enjoyed a Chicago White Sox game on the fourth day.
Twelve teams advanced to the double-elimination bracket-play, and Perfect Game 11u won all four of its games in the winner’s bracket over three days to finish 9-0 at the tournament. The PG 11s beat Connecticut-based CT Stealth 9-5 in the championship game after sending the Stealth to the loser’s bracket with a 5-4 win a day earlier in the winner’s bracket final.
“The secret is staying in the winner’s bracket,” Clark said. “If you get in the loser’s bracket you better be pretty deep in pitching. You’re fighting through that with a lot of games and it’s tough to come back.”
In its first pool-play game, Perfect Game 11u fell behind the Plainfield Vipers (Illinois), 9-1, but rallied to win 10-9 and remain in the winner’s bracket.
“We had given up eight walks and two hit-by-pitches, which is totally uncharacteristic of us,” Clark said. “We live on playing fundamental defense and throwing strikes, and the plays we’re supposed to make – and it’s kind of remarkable at that age – they tend to make them.”
The Perfect Game 11s other pool-play wins weren’t so close; they won those four games by a combined score of 32-7.
It was much more difficult in bracket-play. The PGs received a first-round bye, and then beat the Lake in the Hills Thunder (Illinois), 12-4, before sneaking past the Motor City Baseball Club Hitdogs (Michigan), 1-0. The win set up the back-to-back contests with CT Stealth.
“We had some great games. I mean, it was just unbelievable,” Clark said. “After the Michigan (Motor City) game, I kind of said, ‘You guys just refuse to lose,’ and a lot of that is because we practice hard and fundamentally we play real good baseball. I’m in awe sometimes when we walk away and (realize) that 10- and 11-year-olds can play at this level.”
Clark submitted a 13-man roster for the USSSA tournament, and 11 of the players made the trip. The roster players, all of whom reside in the Cedar Rapids metro area, are:
McClain Burger, Griffen Clark, Braden Frazier, Mason Hook, Jared Keiser, Gaberiel Lux, Matthew Mims, Zakary Packingham, Nate Sealy, Brock Simon, Spencer Touro, Levi Usher and Connor Van Scoyoc.
Touro, a shortstop and pitcher, was named the tournament’s Defensive Most Valuable Player and Frazier was named to the All-Tournament Team. Frazier, Hook, Touro and Van Scoyoc handled most of the team’s pitching duties at the tournament.
Griffen Clark, Touro, Usher and Van Scoyoc form the core of the team. Those four have been playing together since they were 7-year-olds playing on Perfect Game 8- and 9-and-under teams. Kids like Clark, Frazier, Keiser and Van Scoyoc were on organized teams as far back as 2006.
Bob Clark and Aaron Van Scoyoc first started a team of 7-year-olds in 2006, and worked with Perfect Game to get some shirts printed up. Van Scoyoc managed a Perfect Game 13u Major team this summer while Clark managed the 11u squad.
Clark expects to have most of this group together again under the Perfect Game banner for at least the next two years. Once they reach the age of 14, high school baseball can limit the player’s participation in USSSA summer events because the state of Iowa offers only a summer high school season.
“This team will be very competitive next year,” Clark said. “We’ve already started talking about what we’re going to do tournament-wise and what are some of the other things we might want to do.”