GLENDALE, Ariz. – Pine Creek Eagles head coach Tom Gregory finished filling out his lineup card while sitting inside the third base dugout on White Sox Field 3 at the Camelback Ranch Cactus League spring training complex and then took a few minutes to chat with a visitor who had rudely invaded his space.
It was Friday morning and Gregory was getting ready to take his team into action in one of two tournament-openers at the 14u PG WWBA West Memorial Day Classic, a 24-team event that runs through Monday. Gregory was enjoying talking about his young squad when he hesitated and motioned toward left field where the Eagles were going through their pregame stretching and throwing workouts.
“Look at them,” Gregory said. “They’re all tall and gangly and they’re still growing into their bodies. They’re 14-years-old and they’ve got immature bodies and they’re dealing with the aches and pains in their growth plates and all those kinds of things.”
The description was pretty much right-on, with most of the players on the 11-man roster – all 11 are from Colorado Springs, Colo., or communities nearby – listed between 5-foot-9 and 6-foot-1 and weighing about 145-pounds on average. All things considered, the Pine Creek Eagles looked like a typical 14u team before they went out and played at an atypically high level.
Pine Creek opened play Friday morning with a 6-0 win over JGB Red 14u out of Ontario, Calif., an early announcement that these kids from Colorado Springs will be a team to be reckoned with over the remainder of the holiday weekend.
Class of 2019 right-handers Kyle Thompson, Charlie Deeds and Kyle Moran combined on a complete-game two-hitter with 10 strikeouts and five walks; Thompson struck out seven and walked five in 3 2/3 innings. Deeds was 2-for-2 with an RBI and two runs scored, Moran was 2-for-3 with an RBI and Jacob Danussi – the biggest kid on the roster at 6-1, 160 – singled and drove in a pair of runs.
It was a satisfying way to kick off the tournament and it came on an unusually windy and mild morning – the high temperature would reach only the low-80s, about 15 degrees below normal for the area this late in May. But, of course, the sun was shining brightly as it usually does here in the Valley of the Sun.
“The nice thing about coming down here is the weather and getting to play on these fields,” Gregory said. “(The kids) always enjoy coming down to Arizona to play baseball anyway, and right now in Colorado it feels like we haven’t seen the sun in the weeks. … This feels like coming down for spring break all over again.”
The Pine Creek Eagles are not an all-star team but are instead a squad made up of middle-school classmates who will all be freshmen at Pine Creek High School in Colorado Springs in the fall. The Eagles name is one the group has been using since their days in youth baseball and is not affiliated directly with the high school.
Up until now, this group has played mostly at the Triple-A and Majors level within the state of Colorado, although it has traveled out-of-state frequently in an effort to seek out the strongest competition. After competition last fall and so far this spring, the Eagles brought a 35-13 record into their inaugural Perfect Game tournament event.
“They’ve done well in Colorado at the Majors level, which is unusual for a bunch of kids from the same school,” Gregory said. “To play at Majors usually requires pulling kids from all over in different cities and from across the state. They enjoy each other, they go to school together, they get to play on the weekends and then they get to talk about it on Monday. It’s pretty nice that way.”
The familiarity the teammates feel with one another was certainly a benefit in their early years together and they have enjoyed a lot of success during their time together. They’ve won tournaments in Colorado which has raised the bar to the point where they can come into an event like the 14u PG WWBA West Memorial and fully expect to be competitive with any of the other 23 teams from six states in the tournament field.
“The goal of this program is to prepare them for high school; that is what this is all about,” Gregory said. “When they enter high school as freshmen next year we want to help them be well-prepared, and experiences like this certainly help them be prepared.
“The ultimate goal is for these kids win a state championship at the high school level and if we can help them at age-14 to do that, that’s what we want to do.”
It will take a lot of teaching from the coaching staff and a willingness to learn on the part of the players to make that goal a reality. It seems like there is not a day that goes by when the players don’t experience something during the course of a game that they had never seen in a live setting before, even if it had been addressed at a practice.
“At this age it a lot of instruction, but it’s less physical now and more of the mental part of the game,” Gregory said. “They know what they’re supposed to do physically … and what they need to do now is learn the mental part of the game, especially on the mound.”
Gregory tells his young pitchers not to think about individual pitches but, instead, pitch sequences. He tells them not to hang on each pitch – whether it was a ball or a strike – and move on to the next pitch while using the previous pitch to make the next one better.
Pine Creek will spend next month playing up at the 16u level against older competition in Colorado high school summer league play. Those games will be played on regulation high school fields – including the one at Pine Creek – and will take on the air of high school games with concession stands open and friends and family in the stands.
“All the little things about the high school baseball experience will start to enter in to it, which is kind of fun for these guys,” Gregory said.
Pool-play at the 14u PG WWBA West Memorial Day Classic continues through Sunday afternoon at both the Camelback Ranch Complex and the Goodyear (Ariz.) Ballpark Complex with the eight-team playoffs scheduled to begin Sunday night. The semifinals and championship will be played Monday on the Dodgers side of the Camelback complex.
Anything but typical, the Pine Creek Eagles hope to be here for the long haul.
“They’re a fun group, they work hard, they have high expectations and they expect to compete well,” Gregory said. “I think they enjoy it – I hope they enjoy it – and I hope they’re learning something along the way; that’s what we’re after. Like I said, the ultimate goal is help these guys win a state championship as high school baseball players at some point.”