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Tournaments  | Story  | 6/29/2018

Top Tier on top at 18u BCS

Jeff Dahn     
Photo: Top Tier Hoffman, 18u BCS (Perfect Game)



FORT MYERS, Fla. – During the first day of the second set of pool-play games at the Perfect Game 18u BCS National Championship last Monday, Illinois-based Top Tier Hoffmann and Quebec, Canada-based Academy Baseball Canada played a game not for the feint of heart.

With the score tied at five in the seventh inning, ABC pushed across three runs in the top of the frame to take an 8-5 lead. Undaunted, TTH rallied for four runs of its own in the bottom half  and escaped with what at the time seemed an unlikely 9-8  victory.

“The Canadian team was great,” Top Tier head coach Glen Hoffmann said Friday, speaking from City of Palms Park. “They’re a very classy team, a very well-coached team. It was a good matchup and I was actually hoping we would be able to play them again.”

Hoffmann got his wish when both Top Tier and Academy Baseball Canada took care of business and met in Friday’s PG 18u BCS National Championship title game at COP, with TTH once again staging a rally to grab a hard-fought 4-2 victory over the kids from Quebec; the game ended just moments ahead of a Southwest Florida summer downpour.

Top Tier Hoffman (8-1-0) took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the third on a two-run single from standout 2018 catcher Chase Stanke, who finished the game 3-for-3 with the two RBI and a run scored.

Academy Baseball Canada (6-3-0) tied the game at two in the top of the fifth when Jacob Brault led off with a double, Tristan Aspeck singled and Brault came in to score on a single from Henri Sauriol; Edouard Savoie followed with a single of his own, driving in Aspeck.

Top Tier’s Ryan Hampe led-off the bottom of the sixth with a walk, Stanke singled and Gavin Doyle laid a perfectly placed bunt down the third baseline for a single, loading the bases. Camden Nisenson hit a hard ground ball up the middle that ABC was able to turn into a double play, but what turned out to be the winning run crossed the plate; Andrew Hoffmann singled to add an insurance run in the 4-2 victory.

2018 right-hander Brady Miller, a Western Michigan signee, got the start for Top Tier and worked four scoreless innings, allowing three hits while striking out four and walking two; he left with a no-decision.

“I’m very proud of our boys; I think we played very well,” Coach Hoffmann said. “We were only carrying (13) kids down here and we were very limited on pitching, so to get through nine games with everybody kind of contributing (was important). Some of our bigger pitchers were throwing longer and stretching the games out was key for us to get here.”

Academy Baseball Canada’s coaches had every reason to be proud of the way their team played here, as well, as they tried to become the second Canadian team to win the championship at the PG 18u BCS in the last four years; the Ontario Blue Jays took home the title in 2015.

ABC also turned in one of the bigger upsets in the playoffs when they recorded an 4-3, eight-inning victory over previously unbeaten Nelson Baseball School in Thursday’s semifinal round.

The Canadians’ Martin Vincelli-Simard, a 6-foot-1, 215-pound 2018 catcher/first baseman from Boisbriand, QC, and a Sacramento State signee, was named the Most Valuable Player after batting 8-for-23 (.348) with two home runs, a double, 11 RBI and three stolen bases.

Top Tier’s Stanke, a 6-foot-2, 185-pound catcher and Minnesota recruit from Sugar Grove, Ill., also put up MVP-like numbers, hitting .429 (9-for-21) with two doubles, 13 RBI and four stolen bases.

Nick Laxner, Top Tier’s 6-1, 160-pound 2018 right-hander from Huntley, Ill., made three appearances at the tournament – he was actually kind of roughed-up by ABC in the teams’ first meeting – and pitched six innings of four-hit, four-strikeout shutout ball in TTH’s 1-0 victory over the Orioles Scout Team in the semifinals; he was named the Most Valuable Pitcher.

Top Tier Hoffman has three weeks left in its summer season but the team’s experiences here this past eight days will likely rank as the highlight of 2018. And Glen Hoffman took a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that it was team from Illinois and team from Quebec, Canada, that played for a PG national championship right here on the Southwest Florida Gulf Coast.

“I think it’s great,” Hoffman said. “Since we’ve been playing down here I think we’ve been taken lightly because we’re a northern team and people think, ‘Ah, they don’t play baseball up there,’” Hoffmann said. “But we do. We actually have a lot of good teams in our program, good kids on this team that are going to go on and play high-level college baseball.”


2018 18u BCS National Championship runner-up: Academy Baseball Canada



2018 18u BCS National Championship MVP: Martin Vincelli-Simard



2018 18u BCS National Championship MV-Pitcher: Nick Laxner
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