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Tournaments | Story | 10/20/2024

Coaches Reflect on Past WWBA Worlds

Perfect Game Staff

Hannah Jo Groves

Coaches interviews courtesy of Assistant Event Coordinator, Devin Sawyer

2024 marks the 27th year of the PG WWBA World Championships. Though it was hosted in Fort Myers one year, all the other 26 annual tournaments have been held in beautiful Jupiter, Florida at the Roger Dean Complex.

Many coaches have made it a tradition to bring their teams from around the country down to compete against the nation’s top prospects - and some of them have been making the journey longer than others.

During the first few days of this year’s event, we asked four different coaches about their experiences with the PG WWBA World Championship over the years.

Jerry Cowan, manager of the 5 Star/Chicago Cubs Scout team, has been to four of these tournaments. When he thinks back a couple years to his first one, he said there’s a very specific aspect that stands out.

“Golf carts,” Cowan laughed. “The volume of people out here watching - pretty intense. It was really enjoyable, just to kind of see an atmosphere like that for the first time.”

Cowan explained that it’s the quality of the experience that’s kept him and his teams coming back.

“Everything’s run so professionally…Everything’s just first class. Everything they (Perfect Game) do is just on good point.”

With a couple more WWBA World Championships under his belt, Eric Lassiter is on his sixth year attending with Power Baseball.

“The amount of college coaches, pro scouts - obviously, that’s what this event was originally intended for…and just seeing the amount of guys here and quality of opponents that you’re going to play, you always see elite arms and those kind of things. It’s always good to go against the best.”

“It’s having the access to all these college and MLB scouts to be here, the golf carts rolling up. It’s a great atmosphere for the players. The parents love to see all the different guys here to watch our kids play…So continue to do that, and I think this thing’s obviously gonna stay what it is - which is the best tournament in the country.”

For Home Plate Chili Dogs owner Walker Searcy, this year marks his ninth coming to Jupiter.

“For the last nine years that I’ve been coming down, we’ve made it to the Elite Eight a lot and we’ve made some good runs like last year…We have a great relationship with PG. We also are a site location for PG…We do everything we possibly can for PG to have an experience like this every year.”

Finally, Jeff Petty of Canes Baseball has been coming down to Jupiter for 19 years.

When he thinks back across all those tournaments, one significant story stands out:

“I remember being on Field Six in a night game and playing in front of, oh my gosh, it was just hundreds and hundreds of scouts, golf carts everywhere. We threw a kid named Mikey O’Brien, who, at the time, was really kind of an unknown commodity. He went out and threw a complete game. We lost one-to-nothing that night to the Diamond Devils, but Mikey got drafted out of high school that year, signed. I remember him just getting a ton of love back then - the landscape was a lot different. He’s well-known in today’s world. I was 23 years old at the time.”

With so much experience at this event, Petty said the consistence is what’s made him want to bring teams back year after year.

“Attention to detail, relationships, I think that starts at the top. You guys (Perfect Game) care about the players. The fact of the matter is that you guys care about people’s experiences. You can’t fake caring like you can fake a lot of things. You cannot fake care…You guys care at a high level and deliver at a high level.”

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