SAN DIEGO, CA - The beautiful San Diego County town of Ramona was the site for the recent Alliance Tournament series that saw fifteen teams, including the USA Jr. Men’s softball team who were in town preparing for the World Championships later this July, wage softball war.

This Alliance series tournament came to San Diego County for the first time and the teams played in the fabulous weather of Southern California’s most scenic area. Three of the teams participating, Team USA Junior Men´s Team, the Amigos and Panteras all came out of the of the round robin portion of the schedule undefeated with Team USA cranking out 65 runs in their four games. In the fourth bracket the Rounders earned the top spot in their bracket posting a 2-1 record. In their last game on the night, the Panteras came back from a 6-1 deficit against Re-Max and rallied to take the game into tiebreaker and scored two in the last inning for the win. Team RAW and the Long Beach Black Sox had the only other extra inning game of the day as they went into the extra inning tied at zero. Raw scored one in the first half of the inning and then held off the Black Sox 1-0 for the win.

In Sunday´s single elimination action, the game of the first round was the Team RAW against Primetime Fastpitch game. In a well played game RAW forced the game into extra innings and then came up with a run in the tiebreaker and advance to the second round. The other finish of note was the first win for the Primos in single elimination action as they defeated the Panteras 7-3. Palm Springs Express, Black Sox, Hustlers, Rounders and the Amigos all advanced into the second round.

Sunday’s second round had the Black Sox over the Primos, Rounders defeating the Hustlers and the Amigos taking out RAW.

The talk of the weekend was about Team USA Junior Men´s team who went 7 - 0 as they earned the championship after defeating the Amigos in a tough 10 inning game by the score of 9 - 8. Sunday morning they faced the Express for the third time as a result of the seedings and pounded out a 9 -0 win to set up their semi-final game with the Black Sox. Team USA held the Sox scoreless through six innings while scoring seven runs of their own. The Sox rallied to score three late runs in the game however Team USA got the final out and the trip to the championship game.

The Amigos advanced to the championship with a come from behind win over the Rounders in their semi-final game. Going into the last inning and trailing by five, they fought back for six runs with the final run coming in on a two-out slap hit by Larry Diaz which forced an awkward throw from the Rounders third basemen and as a result of the bad throw the winning run came across the plate to score the winning run.
In the championship game between Team USA and the Amigos, the teams battled back and forth the first five innings as both teams scored often. After five innings the score was tied at seven when both teams pitching settled down.

Both teams had late inning chances to score but each time the opposing defenses made the plays to end innings forcing more extra innings. In the top of the 10th Team USA was finally able to get to the Amigos and scored two runs. In the bottom of the 10th inning the Amigos countered with another comeback and scored one run and had runners at the corners when Team USA was able to get the final batter out with a strikeout and the exciting 9-8 victory.