Saturday kicked off the first day of PGF Nationals 2017 and it was an action-packed day that saw the 18U, 12U and 10U first round of bracket games set up at the morning breakfast for all the coaches in Anaheim, California as well as the start of pool games and the beginning of team sign-ins at the Huntington Beach Sports Complex.



What makes PGF Nationals so impressive is that it's not just a series of pool and bracket games, it's an event that is as colorful and vast off the field as it is on the field.

Legendary coach Sue Enquist addressed the hundreds of club coaches who attended the morning breakfast/bracket draw at the Phoenix Club in Anaheim and told the coaches "you should feel great about yourselves and your team for just making it here."

Larry Brushett, who now consults with PGF after a long and prestigious career with Mizuno, commented that he was at a club even recently and talked to several club coaches, asking if they would be going to PGF Nationals. "'Oh no,' many said," Brushett explained. "'We're not good enough to play at PGF,'" emphasizing how elite of a group the teams are who have descended upon Southern California.

And then the big drama of the day took place: the bracket unveiling as teams would draw a marked ping-pong ball which would randomly place a team in a game slot in either Bracket A or B.

The stunner was that two of the top 18U teams in the country, the OC Batbusters-Stith and So Cal Choppers-Fausett squads, would face off in their second game in Bracket A play and, just beyond that would face--if all teams won, of course--another top team in either the Corona Angels or the Firecrackers-Brashear group.

When asked what he thought of the difficult draw out of the game, the Batbusters' Mike Stith gave a surprising answer.

"This is the first year where I really didn't care about the draw," the two-time National Champion coach admitted. "It is what it is and these girls are playing great and we knew that losing four key players (to the USA Softball Jr. National team in particular) would make it tough, but I'm proud of how they're playing, how they've come together and it will be exciting to see how they do this week."



For the next two weeks, the PGF Nationals will invade Orange County with teams qualified and ready to compete in 18U, 12U, and 10U during week one July 23-29 and 16U and 14U during week two July 29-August 5. 

Let The Battle Begin

The Batbusters do have the confidence of having won just a week ago another Nationals, the World Fastpitch Championship held in Kansas City.

In Bracket B, the intriguing match-ups start right out of the gate Monday at 8 AM John Corn's Lady Lightning team, which has finished Top 10 several times, will face the Beverly Bandits-Allen squad in a play-in game with the winner to play one of the favorites of the entire 18U Premier tournament, All American Sports Academy who was a co-champion in Boulder.

The winner of that game Tuesday would then face either a loaded Georgia Impact Premier team or an always tough Rhode Island Thunder team.

There are few easy pathways to the championship, but these teams will really show their mettle if they can run the gauntlet of battling some of the elite programs in the nation.

In the afternoon and evening, teams officially checked in and some pool play games began at the Huntington Beach Sports Complex.

So prestigious and respected is the PGF Nationals platform, that when teams checked in many were officially logged in by NCAA greats like Sydney Romero (Oklahoma), Amanda Lorenz (Florida) or Brooke Vines (Tennessee).



Helping her former Corona Angels club team--which her father, Kenny, helps coach--was Women's College World Series MVP Shay Knighten, another Sooner.

Shay talked openly about the World Series triumph by Oklahoma, in particular how draining the 17-inning marathon game was that lasted about 5 ½ hours.

Said Shay, "We were so tired that after the game most of us didn't eat dinner. We didn't even want our phones, we just went home and went to bed!"

More pool play games will dominate Sunday's action as teams continue to filter into Huntington Beach, before bracket play officially starts Monday with some play-in games before the on-field play will stop in the early afternoon to allow all to attend the opening ceremonies, always one of the most popular aspects of the PGF Nationals which includes vendors, speakers such as Sue Enquist and Jennie Finch, music and other entertainment and the vibe and energy of thousands of excited players getting together.

On Tuesday, FloSoftball begins our coverage of the live streaming of the 18U Premier games at Huntington Beach Sports Complex and the 12U action at Harvard Park in Irvine.

Stay tuned to FloSoftball.com for more updates and day-by-day coverage of PGF Nationals which promises to have dramatic games and surprising twists all along the way to next Friday's championship games which will be streamed live on FloSoftball and ESPN (the 18U Premier title match and the PGF All-American Game).

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