The 16U National Team Championships Arizona is officially in the books after an extremely high level display of baseball came to a close with TB SoCal alone on the mountain top after a 7-4 win over Stacked National on Sunday at Surprise Stadium.
SoCal jumped out to an early lead, plating four-runs in the first two innings. Luke Martinez got the party started with an RBI sacrifice fly in the bottom of the first. The second inning then included a three-spot, including back-to-back RBI singles off the bats of Ryan See and Jackson Alba to make it 4-0 early.
“We know Stacked is a really good team that knows how to come back. It was really important for us to come out swinging early and set the tone,” Alba said. “I was looking to get a pitch I could hit and just smoke it somewhere. My whole approach was just to smack a line drive. I got the pitch that I wanted and did what I did,” said Alba.
The early run support gave a huge boost of confidence to starting pitcher Jack Green, as he took the offensive momentum over to the mound and got to work.
“When you get those early runs, it just helps you relax a lot. I started attacking hitters more and started worrying about pitches off the plate to then work harder to get those pitches in, make guys roll over and fly out. Having a great offense that’s able to get runs on the board early just helps calm the nerves,” said Green.
Green would go on to post five innings of work, surrendering four earned runs while racking up seven strikeouts on the way to a gold medal.
“The fastball knee height was really working, because the umpire in the beginning had a pretty small zone. Once I got that fastball down, they were just hitting fly balls and ground outs, so that definitely helped,” Green said.
SoCal continued to ride the arm of Green while staying potent on offense. Later in the fifth inning, Dylan Keliiholokai laced a sharp two-run double to right center to put his team in the driver's seat up 7-1.
“I was looking for a slider. I feel like I saw the slider very well today. His fastball was running into us, so I didn't want to get jammed. I tried to stick with the slider and drive it the other way and that's what I did,” said Keliiholokai.
Stacked National wouldn’t go down quietly, as Nathan Lopez hit a towering solo home run prior to a two-run single off the bat of Nolan Riesenberg which reeled them right back in it at 7-4.
However, the battle tested, next man up mentality of TB SoCal reigned supreme as a scoreless seventh put a lid on an incredible eight-straight-win championship run over the course of just five days for Head Coach Ryan Thompson and his team.
“It's a great reward for the kids for playing hard, letting things take care of themselves and not worrying about everything else. We plan out our pitching, we plan out playing time so the kids stay healthy. We don't push over a certain pitch limit. They just kind of stayed and played baseball and didn't let the moment get too big for them,” Thompson said.
The grueling grind of the eight-game gauntlet was worth every step of the way for Alba and the rest of the team, as one of a kind emotions are fully unlocked at the conclusion of USA Baseball’s National Team Championships.
“When I saw the ground ball, and I saw Jordy (Jordan Kurz) flip it to get that final out, I started going crazy and was having so much fun. Moments like that are what you play for and what baseball is all about,” Alba said.
Prior to TB SoCal calling itselves champs, CBA San Diego began the day with a bronze medal win. CBA ran up a dominant 8-0 win over the fourth place SoCal Birds to cement a third-place finish.
TB SoCal has now secured its second gold medal in the 16U division of Champs Arizona, becoming the first gold medal squad in the 16U division since TB SoCal Easton in 2021.
Notably, TB SoCal has now won six gold medals between the 14U-17U divisions dating back to 2012. The 2025 16U team now joins the likes of 15U TB SoCal (2023), 17U TB SoCal Evo (2022), 16U TB SoCal Easton (2021), 14U TB SoCal (2017) and 17U TB SoCal Adidas (2017) as gold medalists at Champs Arizona.
