Orange County Teams Continue To Dominate NHSI

CARY, N.C.—While 2017 might have stood out among previous National High School Invitationals for its high-caliber field, one aspect continued to ring true within USA Baseball’s National Training Complex: California baseball dominance.

More specifically, Southern California baseball dominance.

All four California teams hailed from the Los Angeles (South Hills) or Orange County (Orange Lutheran, Dana Hills and Huntington Beach) areas. The quartet combined to go 11-5 in the tournament, with two of those losses coming at the hands of fellow California teams.

Three of the four semifinalists were SoCal clubs, and Orange Lutheran won the championship game against Dana Hills, 3-2, marking the fifth time in the tournament’s six years that an Orange County team has won.

Mater Dei High won the first two NHSIs in 2012 and 2013, San Clemente won the 2015 edition and Huntington Beach won last year’s tournament. The First Academy, from Orlando, Fla., won in 2014 and remains the only non-Orange County champion.

“I think the NHSI has created an opportunity for California to go out there and prove that it still is at the top,” Lutheran coach Eric Borba said. “I think that you have strong states—Florida, Texas, Georgia—those states play really, really good baseball and have some teams that would compete in California.

“But the amount of quality teams in California far surpasses that.”

So why do California teams continue to dominate the event? USA Baseball’s 18U National Team Director Matt Blood mentioned that it could simply be the weather that allows California teams more time to get into mid-season form.

“Maybe they’re just further along in their preparation because they’ve been able to do it a little bit longer,” Blood said. “That learning curve is just better for them because they’ve been able to be out a little longer and practice more, but every program has their own philosophies and differences. I wouldn’t say (that their preparation is) systematically different in California than they are anywhere else.”

Warm weather is an oft-repeated answer and is certainly a factor, but the repetitive dominance that Orange County teams have shown begs for more details.

Population density? Orange County is the 14th-most dense county in the country according to the 2010 U.S. census. Affluence? Orange County’s median income is $74,344—the 79th-highest in the nation, again per the 2010 census.

“I think you can take all of those things and there’s somewhat of an equal percentage into all of them,” said Borba, who also points to coaching as another factor. “They all contribute.”

For Blood, the population and weather that California has were the obvious answers for a reason.

“I think that California’s sheer size and population density, and the fact that they have agreeable weather basically year-round, is a nice formula for success and producing high-level programs,” Blood said. “When you have that many people to choose from in an area and the ability to play year-round, that really helps.”

But those factors don’t just impact players. Coaches also face more competition, and that in turn also improves programs.

Borba alluded to how, when he left De La Salle in Northern California to join Orange Lutheran, he found himself learning more often than teaching, with Brett Kay—now the head coach of JSerra’s baseball program—at the helm.

“I had to become a student (at) finding different ways to be successful on the field, and I think our kids are just battle-tested so much more than where they are other places,” Borba said. “You’ve got 50 schools in Southern California that could go back to the NHSI that could have a chance to win it, that could compete.”

Borba isn’t the only one who thinks that.

“It’s not just the fact that they play year-round,” a scout with an American League organization said, “it’s the level of competition they face year-round, it’s the ability they have to grow as a team year-round, and overall a team from Florida or California is always going to have the advantage in that circumstance.”

A few days after the NHSI, Borba talked with a non-California coach of an NHSI team who said some of their district games weren’t competitive. Borba couldn’t relate.

“You don’t find that out here,” he said. You can go down Division I, Division II, Division III—every game is going to be competitive.”

That competitiveness has turned the NHSI, for the most part, into a West Coast party.