FORT MYERS, Fla. – It can sometimes be a little humbling – perhaps even a little intimidating – for a new travel team program to come into a Perfect Game national championship tournament only to find itself staring straight down the barrel at teams wearing the uniforms of established programs like Georgia Jackets, Elite Squad, Florida Burn, FTB and Team Elite.
Over the past four days at the 15u PG BCS National Championship, upstart Power Baseball 2020 out of Winter Garden, Fla., was not only unintimidated but most of the time was downright dominant in completing pool-play with a 5-1-0 mark, a string that started with four lop-sided victories.
“We’re a very competitive program and we have a lot of talent,” head coach Tony Mehlich said Monday before his team went 1-1 in its last two pool-play games, good enough to earn a berth in Tuesday’s Fourth of July bracket-play.
“Our name may not be as well-known and we have a lot respect for all those teams, but as long as we come out and play sound baseball – baseball is baseball – I think anybody can win at any given time.”
Power Baseball is into its first summer as an independent program, and during the early segment of this summer season the coaching staff kept itself busy just trying to figure out the best lineups, the best situations and the best positions, and now, as the season winds down, things are really starting to click.
The Power Baseball 2020 staff consists of Mehlich, who is the head baseball coach at Bishop Moore Catholic High School in Orlando; Jesse Marlo, the head coach at West Orange High School in Winter Garden; Eric Lassiter, the head coach at one-year-old Windermere High School in Orlando, and Brian Dempsey, the co-owner and director of baseball operations at the Turn2 Sports and Performance complex in Orlando.
The coaches originally concentrated on bringing in young ballplayers from their own Central Florida high school programs into the Power Baseball program, but have since expanded and are accepting kids from across the state. Four of the roster spots are filled by prospects from West Orange, two attend Windermere and one attends Bishop Moore.
“As a coaching staff, we’re trying to develop kids and put them in the best situations possible, and I think that’s kind of what’s happening right now,” Mehlich said. “Our kids understand what a rotation is (and) our pitchers understand they have to pound the zone and trust their defense. But they’re young and mistakes will be made, and every mistake is an opportunity to teach and to coach.”
These ballplayers run into each other frequently during Florida’s spring high school season and when they finally get together at the beginning of the summer and put on the same uniform, they continue to talk about their high schools and their seasons just past. They are competitors first and foremost, after all, and that’s what competitors do.
Mehlich and his associates – men who live and breathe Florida high school baseball – are intent on building a program based on respect, one where the young men who are a part of it respect the game, respect each other and will go out of their way to pick each other up. Sharing a common uniform can be an extremely unifying experience.
Power Baseball had two teams at the 15u PG BCS, this Power Baseball 2020 team and another group of 2020s playing under the Power Baseball 2020 White name (it didn’t advance to the playoffs). The organization fields seven teams in all: two 2018s, two 2019s, two 2020s and one “hybrid” team with a mix of 2019s and 2020s.
“As a program, playing in great tournaments like the ones Perfect Game puts together, that’s exactly the kind of atmosphere and exposure we want for these kids moving forward,” Mehlich said. “We have really good relationships with tournament directors and high school coaches, and I think they trust us as far as our players’ development as well as providing a platform for them to be successful.”
In their first set of three pool-play wins, the Power 2020’s outscored their opponents by a combined 29-2. After the pools were re-seeded and re-shuffled, they lost to the Alpharetta, Ga.-based 15u Georgia Jackets, 7-3, but still finished 2-1 by shutting out their other two opponents and posting a combined run differential of 22-7.
The run totals speak for themselves, but apart from the loss to the Jackets, the Power Baseball 2020s also got excellent pitching along the way. 2020 right-handers Matthew Dadlani and Marcus Valle, and 2020 lefty Alex Britton were lights-out early, and on Saturday 2020 righty Carson Montgomery and Britton combined a four-inning, seven-strikeout no-hitter in a 14-0 win over Team BEAST 2020 out of Commack, N.Y.
“With a young group, there’s always going to be that one or two innings where you have to kind of control the inning, play for outs and just slow the game down, and that just didn’t happen (in the first four games); we’ve been playing some pretty sound baseball,” Mehlich said. “It starts with our pitching, and as long as they can trust their defense and pound the zone and get some quick outs … that helps a team and gives us momentum on and off the field.”
Jason Brackman, Pablo Delgado, Zachary Levenson, Kevin McGrath, William Quinones, Montgomery and Valle have been among the team’s most consistent hitters at the 15u PG BCS.
Montgomery is a 6-foot-1, 180-pound outfielder/right-hander from Windermere, Fla., who attends Windermere High School and is ranked No. 46 overall in the national class of 2020 (his older brother, Cameron Montgomery, is an outfielder on the University of South Florida baseball team). He hit .429 (6-for-14) with a double, a triple and four RBI in Power’s first six games, and the 14-year-old is obviously enjoying himself immensely playing down here this week.
“We’ve been working well together,” he said when asked about the team’s 4-0 start in pool-play. “We’ve been making the plays on the field and getting timely hits and just really working well together. … We come from different areas (around Florida) and when we get together some of us can kind of have a little vacation while we’re still playing baseball.
“I can always learn something new and that’s what makes (a tournament like this) so much fun,” he continued. “And I’m really confident in this team; we have a lot talent. I’m just hoping we can make a name for ourselves out here.”
That’s the hope everyone associated with the Power Baseball program harbors. The established programs all once went through the growing pains associated with their first year of operation and may have struggled to accomplish what the Power 2020s did over the first four days of play at the 15u PG BCS National Championship. And now, it’s a matter of keeping everything in perspective.
“I tell our kids they don’t represent themselves, they represent their family, they represent Power, they represent their high school, they represent their high school coach, so when they go out and play hard … they’re playing for something bigger,” Mehlich concluded. And those are words any ballplayer in his mid-teens can take to the bank.