FORT MYERS, Fla. – A lot can change from one Perfect Game summer season to the next. New travel team programs walk out on the PG national championship stage for the first time, others take a bow and exit stage right.
The established programs return year after year, of course, more often than not with the same coaches and support staff. But there is upheaval even within those organizations, as they face the challenge of finding continuity with their rosters.
Kids, after all, move from one age-group to the next, whistling along the way while they achieve personal and team success with an eye on the future and seldom on the past.
Which leads to a question: Does a team that wins a PG national championship at one age level the previous year have an advantage coming into the same event at an older age level the following year? In the case of Five Star National 15u Dobbs, the answer appears to be a resounding “Yes.”
“Winning is good for the (team) chemistry,” 5 Star National 15u manager Britt Dobbs told PG late Friday morning, speaking from the Lee County Player Development 5-Plex. “Obviously, these kids have played together for a long time and they know each other (really well).
“It’s a good thing moving forward that they get comfortable with each other and kind of know where they’re supposed to be and who they’re playing with,” he added. “Just good chemistry and this team has always been that way; that’s why they’re so successful.”
Seven members of this 5 Star 15u team were also rostered with the 5 Star National 14u King squad that won last year’s PG 14u BCS National Championship with a 9-0-0 record. Davis Green, Hunter Russell, Nick Wrubluski and Tanner Zellem were named to the all-tournament team at the conclusion of the event, and Wrubluski was named the Most Valuable Player.
“It was amazing; it was like a dream run,” he told PG on Friday. “Everyone did their jobs perfectly. The pitchers threw strikes and we came up with the bats big, and there were moments when we did everything right. … We can carry that into this week; we want to win it again.”
The 5 Star National 15u’s are off to a good start in completing that mission. They cruised through their first three-game set of pool-play, outscoring their opponents by a combined 28-2. And they kept it going on Friday, beating the Florida Burn 2022 Orlosky 10-1 in five innings to open the second three-game set of pool-play.
That game provided a bit of a microcosm of what this team can be. It scored its 10 runs on six hits while taking advantage of seven walks and three Burn 2022 errors; only four of the 10 runs were earned.
Six players collected one hit apiece: Zellem – a 2022 ranked No. 93 nationally in his class – doubled, drove in three runs and scored one; 2022 Jaxson West doubled, drove in two and scored two; Russell, a 2022 ranked No. 143 (Miami commit), singled and finished with a pair of RBI and a pair of runs scored; Blaydon Plain, a 2022 ranked No. 112, singled, walked twice and scored three runs.
2022 left-hander Ashton Crowther allowed one earned run on one hit while striking out six and walking one in his five innings of work.
“We just like to have fun; we like to play the game the way it’s meant to be played,” Russell told PG on Friday. “It’s not all seriousness and if you get out it’s not the end of the world. If you get out, have your teammates pick each other up and just have a good time.”
There are a few other ranked prospects on this roster. 2022 Sullivan Brackin (Florida commit) comes in at No. 60 and 2022 William Joyner at No. 193; Cole Mathis (College of Charleston) is a top-500 2021. 2022 Gage Harrelson, currently unranked, has been a key so far down here this week.
When Andy Burress was first getting the Warner Robins, Ga.-based 5 Star Baseball organization off the ground early this decade – it was called Chain Baseball originally – the rosters consisted almost entirely of Georgia boys.
The program’s reach has extended outward over the past several years and now enjoys an established presence in Florida and beyond. This National 15u Dodd roster is almost 50-50 when it comes to Georgia and Florida prospects.
Dobbs called it “a great mix” and noted that as the program has continued to enjoy success at PG WWBA, PG BCS and PG World Series national championships, interest in the organization continues to grow in lock-step. That, in turn, makes the program better as a whole and the directors are able to build quality teams, like 5 Star National 15u Dobbs, from the top down.
“We evaluate our kids throughout the year and we try to pick those gritty, gutty, scrappy kind of kids that have a belief that, ‘Hey, we refuse to lose,’” Dobbs said. “That’s the kind of kid we try to get at 5 Star, and when you put those types of kids together it’s a pretty tough squad to beat.”
At the 15u level, the BCS National Championship could be viewed as the first leg in PG’s national championship triple crown. After completing play here early next week, 5 Star National 15u Dobbs will head for the north Atlanta suburbs to take part in the PG 15u WWBA National Championship July 12-19; from there, it’s off to Sanford, Fla., for the 15u PG World Series.
Dobbs explained that he and his associates at 5 Star try to set up the summer schedule in such a way that they could use the tournaments that preceded the 15u BCS to mix some of the rosters around and play a lot of kids at a lot of different positions.
He smiled when he said that most of the prospects on this roster consider themselves shortstops – “I’ve got six shortstops on my team,” he said. – so several of them have had to learn to play the outfield.
“The early schedule allows us to be flexible and kind of move kids around and batting orders around to kind of see what’s the best fit for everybody,” Dobbs continued. “The first part of the summer gives us that opportunity and then at the end when we’ve got these big three big tournaments left, hopefully the coaching staff has done a good enough job to put them where they’re supposed to be and we’re ready.”
Competitors like Russell are just happy to get this chase for the “PG triple crown” started:
“It’s just getting better baseball against more competitive teams and more energy from your team; it’s fun, it really is,” he said. “I would hope that we’d all lock in at all of these tournaments because from here on out, this is where the big grind begins.”
Like every nationally competitive, high-end travel ball organization in the country, the intent is to keep this core group together throughout their high school careers. The goal in mind, of course, is winning several more PG national championship trophies at the 16u and 17u levels before the players move on to college or professional baseball.
“We’ll lose kids, we’ll gain kids and we’ll mix it around, but for the most part, yes, we try to keep these kids together as they run through the program,” Dobbs said.
This 5 Star National 15u Dodd roster is, indeed, filled with talented players but Dobbs was quick to point out that the program has had teams in the past that were also filled with elite-level talent but didn’t do nearly as much winning as this one. That’s because, he said, they lacked the chemistry and the camaraderie that his team enjoys.
“They’re elite talent-wise but they’re good friends, too,” Dobbs concluded. “They pull for each other and I think that’s the combination that makes them so good.”