Mountain Ridge finds perfect fit

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa.

He asked local high school baseball coaches. He asked former major league players. He asked fellow Little League managers. He asked Centennial softball coach Mike Livreri.

Ashton Cave covered every base from Mountain Ridge Park to different foul poles across Southern Nevada over three days of All-Star tryouts, intent on gathering as many unbiased eyes as bleachers could fit.

There are countless ways to build a team good enough to advance to the Little League World Series. Cave did so by considering countless opinions.

“We took everything into consideration when evaluating the kids,” Cave said. “Obviously, history in all sports will tell you that teams built strictly on talent don’t always win. It was difficult. Our league has a lot of very good players. We’re fortunate that way. We had to let some very good kids go, had to end their dream, and that was hard. Just cut us to the core. But we wanted the 14 kids who would fit together best, who understood that everyone had a role. No flamboyance. No cockiness. No arrogance. Nothing that would disrupt the dugout.

“You know, I had some people who really believed in our coaching staff give me artwork of (Williamsport) and told me this is what we should shoot for, that it was possible. But we knew the odds were against us coming out of Nevada and having to face West Coast teams in a regional. It hadn’t been done before, so the doubt crept in.”

The team he ultimately selected has buried that doubt like none in Nevada history, a point that will be made on ESPN2 today at 4 p.m., when Mountain Ridge opens play in the Little League World Series as the first from its state to ever be featured on this stage.

Cave had more than 10 coaches evaluate tryouts that would lead to forming the roster that, as the West representative, first opposes the Midwest champion from Rapid City, S.D., at Howard J. Lamade Stadium. Some balked at the thought of judging Little Leaguers and agreed only to watching one day of action.

Then came back for the next two.

“Every high school coach we had out there said all our kids would have made their junior varsity teams right now as 12-year-olds, that they knew how to play, knew the game, respected the game,” Cave said. “And they were sincere about it.”

A perfect storm. That’s how Cave described his team’s journey following a Western Regional championship win against Northern California on Saturday that clinched Mountain Ridge’s spot in the World Series.

And it was, really. A perfect mix of talent and fortune.

Mountain Ridge is good. It will offer some of the best pitching of those eight teams to represent the United States here over the next 11 days, a fact that could keep the kids from Las Vegas around deep into next week.

Maybe until the very end.

But you couldn’t watch the regional tournament in San Bernardino and not see this: California teams hadn’t been this weak in decades, sides from the southern and northern parts of that state not near the level of those that have consistently dominated out west.

There is a reason no state has won as many World Series titles as California. It’s always good. It wasn’t this year. It was pedestrian at best.

“You go down there to regionals and assume you will have to beat some of the best teams in the country,” said Larry Quaney, who took Mountain Ridge teams to San Bernardino in 2010 and 2013, when his side was eliminated by the eventual U.S. champion from Southern California. “But this year was different. I can’t remember California being that down. I think our (Mountain Ridge) team had more talent than the one this year, but these kids got it done. It was incredibly exciting watching them. What a great moment for them and Las Vegas baseball, for baseball throughout the entire state.

“I think they will do very well in the World Series. They have two horses (in Austin Kryszczuk and Brennan Holligan) as starting pitchers. Kryszczuk is at a different level than most 12-year-olds in the country. I’m not sure if the team can hit well enough to win it all, but that pitching can take them a long way there.”

It is a goal — getting here, winning here — the Mountain Ridge team made at its first All-Star practice, before winning district and state and regionals, before slipping on uniforms Wednesday night with “WEST,” scrawled across their chests and climbing aboard a flatbed truck to take part in a parade.

They made the goal and left it there, hidden in the back of their minds, never to address it until the final out was secured in a regional championship.

It’s how this team is built. No flamboyance. No cockiness. No arrogance.

“We knew we had a lot of talent, but we never took anyone lightly,” said infielder Bradley Stone. “We never thought beyond the next game. We just show up and play hard and have fun together.”

That, more than anything, is what all those unbiased eyes must have seen.

Today, it pays off as few could have imagined.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.