The CV Crush, a local 12U travel baseball team, won two tournaments in two weeks going 10-0 on the road at the USSSA MLK Super NIT in Riverside and at the Beast Super Bowl Classic in Encino. The team has earned the #1 spot in the USSSA 12U Southern California 2012 tournament rankings. It is also now ranked sixth in the nation out of 753 AA teams who play in USSSA sponsored tournaments across the country. In addition to playing in regional tournaments, The Crush is also looking forward to competing in the Cooperstown Field of Dreams tournament in upstate New York this summer.

Led by the dominant pitching of Ty Langford, Scott Vinceri, Austin Oberlander and Will Overstreet, the Crush held opponents to an average of 1.8 runs per game in the two tournaments. The defensive performances yielded few errors and notable diving stops and solid glove work by Lorenzo Respicio, Lucas Martos-Repath and the stone wall catching of Joe Masters.

Offensively, the boys scored 63 runs behind the big bats of Vinceri, Jaimy Blank and Jett Costibolo as well as the expert base stealing of Kurt McNevin.

Team Head Coach Ryan Benko – who works in the front office for the L.A. Dodgers – said, “The competition was solid, we played teams that have beaten other teams that we lost to in the past as well as teams that have won tournaments. In this tournament we beat them convincingly. I think the biggest factor … was that we got contributions from everyone. It was hard for other teams to find a weakness.”      Respicio, one of the team’s star outfielders, added to his coach’s comment. “I think we won because we’re a really tight group that has been working hard together for a long time.”

The CV Crush is an independent ball club that was formed to give the best local 12-year old baseball talent the opportunity to play together as one team and to face a high level of local and national competition.