FORT MYERS, Fla. – Florida-based The Court-Kangaroo Court Baseball Club (KCBC) and Texas-based Stix Baseball Club 2020 walked out onto the field at Dunbar High School Tuesday morning for the start of each team’s second pool-play game at the 14u Perfect Game BCS Finals with a lot in common.

Their histories and any recent strings of success couldn’t be any more different, to be sure, with Stix Baseball Club having a long and steady presence in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for many years and the Kangaroo Court Baseball Club existing in the Tampa area for only the last 10 months.

But it is the newcomer Kangaroos that came into this week’s 14u PG BCS Finals with the glossier of the two resumes, having won tournament championships at the 14u PG Invitational (Major Division) in Cartersville, Ga., and at the 14u PG Florida State Championships and the 14u PG WWBA East Memorial Day Classic, both in Fort Myers, since the end of April.

The two teams came together on another steamy early July morning in Lee County, Fla., after having won their respective pool-play openers a day earlier, on the Fourth of July. The Court-KCBC was feeling pretty good after disposing of Elite Squad 14u North (Pembroke Pines, Fla.), 8-0, and Stix BC 2020 was riding high coming off its 10-0 pasting of Rhino Baseball (Homer Glen, Ill.).

It promised to be a fine game, with both head coaches – Kangaroo Court-KCBC’s Rob Hinchliffe and Stix BC 2020’s Tyler Eager – both fully appreciative of the responsibilities they have taken on in running 14u baseball teams.

This is an important summer for these young ballplayers – most of them are in the class of 2020, meaning they will be freshmen in the fall –as they move into high school and become more and more serious about their baseball careers. And to top it off, this particular tournament is a PG national championship event, which means the spotlight shines even a little bit brighter. The coaches have their distinct – but very similar – messages to their players.

“What I try to instill in our guys is to treat every game the same. You don’t have to play uptight, its’ just another baseball game and it happens to be Florida,” Eager said Tuesday morning. “We’re used to the heat and that’s not a big factor for us, so we want them to go day by day, worrying about the game at hand and not focusing on what’s ahead. Just staying in the moment, that’s what’s going to help us.”

The 14u PG BCS Finals schedule format offers one game a day for four days with the possibility of two on the fifth, sixth and seventh days; it mirrors the 15u PG BCS Finals that wraps-up Thursday and the upcoming 17u and 16u PG BCS Finals. Hinchliffe likes that the event is spread-out over a week’s time but cautions that most of the teams here are on what he calls “baseball vacations.”

“For our guys, we don’t take the hardline approach of ‘No fun, this is only baseball,’ because we understand that as much baseball as these guys play, if it’s always like that eventually they’re going to wear out,” he said. “We take this opportunity for them not just to grow on the baseball field but for them to grow as individuals. … (What that) means is letting them do what they do with a curfew in place to just basically make sure they’re ready to go.”

Hinchliffe and his staff feel like they’re in the business of getting these young guys ready for the immediate years that lie ahead, when they’re in high school and playing summer ball at the even more competitive 15u, 16u and 17u levels.

At the 14u level, Hinchliffe believes, it’s just as important to teach the kids how to manage themselves as it is monitoring how many reps they’re going to take in the batting cage or how many times they’re going to throw a bullpen session.

“The approach we take is, ‘Hey, enjoy yourselves, be smart, be mentally tough and when you’re here at the ballpark it’s time to do a job,’” he said. “Our boys are a pretty disciplined and talented group and fortunately they’ve made it easy on me.”

Stix BC 2020’s Eager agreed: “There are definitely things that you can do in that down-time that will hurt you going into the next day, and there are definitely things you can do that can help you. … It’s nice to have fun – we’re in Florida and it’s a vacation – but it’s also business time, too, so we’ve got to treat it like a business trip, as well.”

Both of these rosters are filled with impressive young prospects, most of whom will continue to play the game at a high level at least through their high school careers if not on into college.

On The Court-KCBC, you have names like Jordan Daphney, Trey Hinchliffe, Bennett Lee, Jake Little, Jackson Miller, Jason Roberts, Matthew Sullivan and Blake Wright, each of whom was named to the all-tournament team at the 14u PG WWBA East Memorial Day Classic; Daphney was named the event’s Most Valuable Player.

In the Stix BC 2020 dugout sat Slayton Day, Jack Quinn, Garrison Berkley, Garrison Rice, Sam Adams, Zachary Escovedo and twin brothers Mason and Jacob Speaker. That’s a short list, with many others contributing on a daily basis.

“It’s really hard for kids at 14 years old to stay mentally focused on every single pitch of every single game but we do our best to keep our kids engaged,” Stix’s Eager said. “Even the guys on our bench, they have a role, too, so we do our best to keep them in every single pitch, no matter what the count is, no matter what the score is.”

Kangaroo Court Baseball Club has only been in existence since last September. It is the product of a merger of three to four highly competitive youth teams in the Tampa area, and Hinchliffe said KCBC considers itself more of an academy than a travel ball organization. The kids get together and train three times a week but they train as individual players at their individual positions and not as a team. All of the kids live in the Tampa Bay area.

“I’m really proud of this group because some of these kids get more accolades than others, but it never seems to really creep into the dugout, which is nice,” Hinchliffe said. “And the accolades seem to spread themselves out, so it’s a really good group to work with.”

Love it or hate it, there seems to be a trend developing in the major male sports where high-profile coaches are starting to make scholarship offers to eighth-graders. It’s happened in football and basketball and is now gaining traction in baseball.

Both Eager and Hinchliffe acknowledge they’re aware of it and they’ve noticed an extra pair of eyes or two focusing in on some of their top players. “We tell them at this age that it really doesn’t matter who’s up in the stands. It could be two people like your mom and your dad or it could be 100 college scouts, you’ve got to play the exact same way,” Eager said.

More importantly, the coaches said, the kids know it’s going on, too. In these crazy days of social media, whispers regarding college recruiting become front page headlines in no time, the validity of the report be damned. It’s how a young ballplayer processes and uses the information he receives that requires extra attention.

“I don’t think that really affects them but they’re more than aware of it,” Hinchliffe said. “A lot of the 2020s that they see who have committed are their friends or guys who they’ve played with over the years, so they’re well aware of it. I don’t think it bothers them at all, though. They’re confident enough in their own abilities that they know their time is coming.”

The Court-KCBC pushed across two runs in the top of the fourth and two more in the top of the seventh to grab a 4-0 victory over Stix BC 2020 early Tuesday afternoon. Trey Hinchliffe, Little and Daphney combined on the five-hit shutout, with Hinchliffe – 5-10, 160-pound 2020 right-hander from Odessa, Fla. – throwing three innings of one-hit ball with three strikeouts. Sullivan and Wright had two singles apiece to lead The Court’s seven-hit attack.

The loss didn’t really hurt Stix BC 2020’s playoff chances all that much, not if they can right the ship in their next three playoff games. Twenty-one teams reach the playoffs at the 14u PG BCS Finals, including the top-two from the pool The Court-KCBC and Stix BC 2020 occupy.

Seeds 12 through 21 play first-round games Friday afternoon and those winners face seeds 1 through 5 in second-round games Saturday morning. The other second-round games feature Nos. 9 vs. 8, 7 vs. 10 and 6 vs. 11 matchups, also Saturday morning.

“This team really has that resiliency factor,” Eager said. “They never think they’re out of a game not matter what the score is. They could be up 10 or they could be down 10 and they’re still going to fight with the same mentality. That’s something special about them that I’ve noticed … and it’s awesome as a coach to see that.”

Eager, a veteran of 10 Perfect Game events between 2007 and 2010 while attending Fort Worth Christian High School, played four seasons at Abilene Christian University (2012-2015) and was there when the school made the move from NCAA Division II to Division I. He’s eager to pass on his experiences to these 14-year-old players and is enjoying himself immensely while he does so.

“Baseball is my passion and I want to be able to help kids get to where I once was and hopefully even far beyond what I got to,” he said. “I feel like I have the knowledge, and the 14 and 15 year olds are the age group I feel like I relate the best to.”