Travel baseball team goes 7-1, earns national championship in
Ariz.
After their second game of the Super Series Winter National Championships in Peoria, Ariz., Next Level manager Angel Rueda along with his coaching staff sat their 14U travel baseball team down for a little discussion.
The squad, made up of players from Hollister, Gilroy, Morgan Hill and Antioch, had won their opening game of pool play – a 3-1 victory over the Ahwatukee Devils – but lost 13-7 to the All-Star Baseball Academy in the following contest.
They were 1-1 in the 19-team American Division Tournament, and possibly in need of a little inspiration.
“We were disappointed because we knew we were a better team than that,” Rueda said. “We were a long way from home. The kids were seeing teams they had never seen before. We told them, we need to look inside ourselves and look why we came here.”
The following day, on Dec. 30, Next Level was slated to play the Dobson Colts at noon. Rueda asked his players to report to the field by 10:45 a.m. Instead, the manager said, his players were up and eating breakfast at 7 a.m.
“I didn’t feel like we were playing as a team and firing on all cylinders until the third game,” Rueda said. “And they really came out firing.”
Up against Dobson that day, Next Level’s Kevin Salvas threw a complete game to lead the 14U team to a 10-1 mercy-rule win.
Whatever was said that night after the loss to the All-Star Baseball Academy evidently worked, as Next Level went on to not only win the crown as the 14U American Division national champions, but they did so in resounding fashion.
Each pitcher went on to throw a complete game, and each game Next Level won was called short due to the tournament’s mercy rule.
They finished 7-1 at the tournament, and after eight days away from their respective homes in the South Valley, they returned from Arizona last week with a six-game winning streak and a title to their name.
Marcos Martinez was named offensive MVP, while Adrian Medina, who played at every position except catcher and first base, was named defensive MVP.
Considering their domination, you could say that Next Level took their game to the next level.
Following the win over Dobson, Next Level entered bracketed play as the No. 7 seed.
Up against the No. 10 Scottsdale Titans, pitcher Dean Knepper threw a complete game in a 9-1 win.
The victory set up Next Level’s game against second-seeded Blue Wave in the following round, where Martinez, who was the winning pitcher in the opener against Ahwatukee, threw a complete game and hit an inside-the-park home run to lead the team in a 12-4 win.
Needing another upset, Next Level found themselves in the quarterfinals against the 3-seed Tucson Mets. With Erik Penrose on the mound, though, the hurler threw 61 pitches over five innings in a 9-1 upset victory.
The South Valley squad banged out three consecutive doubles in the first inning to set the tone in that game. Said Rueda, “We hit first and we never looked back. That was a big game.”
As it turned out, Next Level was in the semifinals against the “very scrappy” No. 5 Arizona Aces, who had previously defeated the top-seeded team in the tournament.
“Their leadoff hitter hit a double, but he tried to stretch it into a triple and he got thrown out,” Rueda said. “That pretty much set the tone.”
Next Level jumped out to an 8-1 lead with Medina on the mound, but the Aces clawed their way back to cut the deficit to 8-7. From there, however, Next Level hit, well, their next level by scoring seven more runs in the game as they went on to win 15-7 in the shortened affair.
Of course, they’d need to do it one more time in the championship game, as the Aces emerged from the losers bracket to play Next Level in the title game.
And this time, it wasn’t nearly as close.
Next Level’s Rafael Garcia threw a three-hit shutout to lead the locals to an 8-0 mercy-rule triumph, and earned their right as national champions of the Super Series 14U American Division.
Rueda said the stage was set after the second inning. An Arizona batter hit a bloop into right field, but three pitches later, the squad managed to get out of the inning.
On the first pitch, second basemen Ray Rueda made a diving catch; on the second pitch, catcher Steven Hernandez threw out the Arizona base runner at second; and on the third pitch, Rueda caught a pop fly, in what was an identical play to the bloop hit earlier in the inning.
“And Next Level scored three runs the following inning,” Rueda said. “The kids played so well down there.”
