FORT MYERS, Fla. – The world of Georgia school-boy baseball is one filled with a lot of “Yes, sir” and “No, sir”; “Thank-you, sir” and “No thank-you, sir.” The prospects playing for a premier Georgia travel ball organization like Winder-based Team Elite Baseball possess a politeness, a civility and a profound respect for the game that at once demands appreciation.
The players on the Team Elite 17’s Prime roster – the program’s top team of prospects from the class of 2016 – attending this weekend’s Perfect Game WWBA Underclass World Championship are at the head of their class when it comes to showing respect and not just for the game but also for the name across the front of their uniforms.
“There’s a lot of pride (within the organization) and (the uniform) carries a lot of weight,” Aaron Schunk, a standout 2016 shortstop and right-handed pitcher from Decatur told PG Friday morning. “All of us understand when we’re wearing the ‘TE’ logo we’re representing the team, our teammates and the coaches. It’s a big responsibility to not do anything dumb or anything, so we all carry ourselves with high expectations and good morals.”
Just don’t be fooled. The players in the Team Elite organization may be polite and respectful, but they also want to kick their opponents’ butt when it comes right down to i9t, and will fight and claw with a tenacity one would expect from a championship-caliber program.
“We have a good group this year; we have a lot of guys that just love the game of baseball,” Team Elite 17’s Prime head coach Romas Hicks said Friday. “This is a good event … and last year we were fortunate to do pretty well in this event (when they advanced to the second round of the playoffs) but came up quite short.
“This year we think we actually have a good team – better pitching, better hitting, better defense – so we feel confident this week, but again, you’ve got to go out and make the plays.”
Things started well enough for Team Elite 17’s Prime on Friday with five pitchers combining to throw 11 consecutive shutout innings. The first five came in an 8-0, five-inning win over the Tri-State Arsenal Showcase Underclass, with 2016 left-hander Justin Glover – a Georgia recruit ranked 210th nationally – working four innings and allowing one hit while striking out nine and walking three.
Six more shutout innings followed in a second game against the East Rockets 16u – 2016 lefty Jonathan Gettys, ranked No. 20 nationally, worked the first four, allowing two hits and striking out 10 – but the bottom fell out when the Rockets 16u rallied for a 2-1 walk-off win in the bottom of the seventh.
It was a damaging loss for the 17’s Prime – only the 54 pool champions advance to Sunday’s playoffs – but perhaps not fatal depending on how the rest of pool-play progresses.
Hicks called this Team Elite 17’s Prime team a “homegrown group” who are mostly from the same area and have been involved in the Team Elite program for a number of years. In many cases they’re high school teammates but in many more they’re high school adversaries. In any event they know each other well and they know each other’s strengths as teammates once they all put on the Team Elite uniform.
“It’s kind of funny that at one minute they’re rivals during the spring and then they’re teammates during the summer and fall,” he said. “The majority of them all live within 20 miles of each other … and a lot of them come from the Parkviews, the Bufords the Miltons – prestigious high school programs where they fight for the state championship every year – and they know how to win.”
Seven of the 2016 prospects on the roster have already made NCAA Division-I commitments: shortstop Cam Shepherd (ranked No. 51 nationally, Georgia); twin brothers/outfielders/infielders/pitchers Austin Wilhite (No.130, Georgia Tech) and Nick Wilhite (No. 131, Georgia Tech); Schunk (No. 172, Georgia); Glover (No. 210, Georgia); outfielder Garrett Hodges (No. 232, Kennesaw State) and right-hander/infielder Christian Ryder (No. 281, Georgia).
Most of the Team Elite 17’s Prime players have established impressive Perfect Game resumes and have been heavily scouted – the seven D-I commitments certainly speak to that fact. Other roster spots are filled with players that likely will play college baseball in a couple of years but are yet to find the right fit.
They’ll have plenty of opportunities to be seen over the next a year or so. A handful of these kids will be at the mega-scouted PG WWBA World Championship over in Jupiter, Fla., Oct. 23-27 and next summer will be at all the premier PG WWBA and PG BCS tournaments. But the here and now is the Underclass World Championship.
“A lot of these guys, they’re at that fine line of really getting on the map; their velocity will start jumping, guys will start putting on weight,” Hicks said. “As a 15-year-old you might be labeled as skinny and now you’re going on 17 and you put on 15 more pounds and you’re throwing harder.
“As an event for underclassmen it really gives the schools a chance to start circling guys and really bear down on guys they might be on the cusp of, and it really lets the kids get their names out there,” he continued. “It’s an event that is heavily scouted and you can really get your name out there to a lot of schools with a good week down here.”
Team Elite 17’s Prime is guaranteed two more games here this weekend, perhaps many more if it can manage to squeeze into the playoffs. This appears to be a resilient group and certainly one that enjoys playing together.
“We’re all from around the same area and we’ve played with each other for a long time; it’s a good group of guys,” Shepherd said. “We’ve got real good chemistry on this team and we’re all real close and everything so it’s a lot of fun. … When we’re on the field it’s all business and we have to go out there and take care of it but off the field we’re goofing around and having a good time with each other.
“It’s special to play with (Team Elite). It’s a great program run by great guys and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
Hicks, who pitched two seasons in the minor leagues (2009-10), is proud that his players are so respectful of the organization and he repays that respect by putting them in an environment like the one the PG WWBA Underclass World Championship offers. With hundreds of college coaches converging on fields in Lee and Charlotte counties here in Southwest Florida, opportunities are sure to arise.
“For some of these guys it’s their first real big taste of being heavily scouted,” he said. “This is where they start getting followed and having scouts specifically come to their game to watch them. So for some guys it’s a shell-shock and other guys it’s just another day at the office.
“It’s just funny how the game as changed and that’s a credit to Perfect Game how well they do at putting on an event where kids as 16-year-olds can get heavily recruited.”
For a guy like Schunk, who already has made his college commitment, the PG WWBA Underclass World Championship is all about the competition.
“I’m here for the experience,” he said. “It’s very eye-opening with how many people come out to the games and how many scouts you see behind home plate, but our coaches tell us to forget about them, play the game that we’ve been playing since we were 4-years-old and get after it; play hard and … leave it all out on the field.”
Added Shepherd: “It’s always fun coming down here and playing against the best competition in the country.”
The Georgia school-boys did come here to have fun and compete for a Perfect Game national championship and a gleaming set of PG championship rings. The loss early Saturday afternoon added a little rain to an otherwise gloriously sunny day but to the people from Team Elite, it is not the end of the world. There is much more to be achieved.
“Every event we go into, we expect to win,” Hicks said. “We’re fortunate that we have built a program where we have the talent to have those expectations. At the same time, at the end of the day, me and (Team Elite founder) Brad Bouras like to say, ‘We didn’t win it but we got three guys college scholarships, so that was a success.’
“While we are trying to win it our ultimate goal is to get these guys to play at the next level, so if we leave on Monday and we didn’t win the championship but three guys got college scholarships out of this, it was a success.”
Yes, sir, and thank you, sir.