SoCal Alliance/Easton - PoliceSoftball.com - Complete Guide to Police Tournament Softball

SoCal Alliance/Easton

Latest Tournament Report:

Perfect 7-0 to win Sterling.

In 2008:

The Alliance is coming off a 59-5 season with 6 tournament victories including the World Series championship. In the off season they lost their two-time team MVP Erik Grove to retirement and lost 2005 HR Derby Champion and PoliceSoftball.com Hall of Famer John “Wasabi Birtcher” as an unrestricted free agent. The Alliance also will not have the services of JJ Garzone much in 2008 due to his work schedule. Last season JJ was huge for the Alliance in 2007 as he hit over .700 on the season and was named an MVP during one of their tourney wins. Lastly, the Alliance will have to replace base hitting specialist Tim Poncy who left mid season last year after due to philosophical differences with management. To replace Erik, John, Tim and JJ, the Alliance signed police softball veterans Nate Baez from LAPD and Big Curt Ledesma from the DEA Combo. Nate is an all-around athlete that will bring a lot of flexibility to the team as he can play any position. Curt will bring a big bat, big game experience and a quiet intensity that the Alliance can use. Expect to see Nate all over the field and Curt mostly at 1B and OF. The Alliance also inked rookie Danny Wells who is new to the police softball circuit. Danny is in the mold of an Alfonso “Zo” Trujillo. He is a lightning fast outfielder that most recently played for TAI/Elite in the civilian world where he earned All-Tourney honors at the ASA C Worlds. Like the Quake, expect the Alliance to have an extremely strong outfield in 2008. In addition to the Alliance sponsors from 2007, the Alliance would like to welcome Kevin McCurdy of KME who has joined the management team for 2008. Kevin is best known for his involvement in the civilian major circuit with teams like Resmondo/KME. The Alliance 2008 schedule should be: DEA Kick-off, Easton Bring Your Real Skilz, PSPOA Palm Springs, West Palm Beach or Manteca in June, Sterling Heights, Desert Classic and the World Series. 2008 OUTLOOK: Loss of veteran players could hurt and team spark plug Alfonso Trujillo may undergo surgery early in the year and may miss 2-3 tournaments. Points will be more difficult to come by early in the season, but by September they should be fully staffed and have their strongest line-up ever. Whatever the case it will be difficult to repeat their 07 performance as no team has yet to repeat as World Series Champion.

In 2007:

Finished 2007 with a 59-5 record, 6 tournament championships and crowned the year as World Series Champions.

In 2006:

The Alliance played well in every tournament in 2006. The Alliance won the May Palm Springs tourney, The Budweiser Shootout and the Wally Karp tournament. The Alliance also placed in the top 5 in what many consider to be some of the toughest tournaments in the nation (5th place finish in World Series, 4th place in Dayton and 3rd place in Vegas, 2nd in the Desert Classic). Couple that with their impressive 5-1 record in the 2006 season against the other teams in the West’s final top 5, the Alliance is our #2 in the West for 2006.

- PoliceSoftball.com

2008 Points	Current Rank	2007 Rank	2006 Rank
56	2	1	2

	Event	Finish	Points	Rank	Top-4	Comment
1.	DEA Kick-Off	1t	2	1t		rainout
2.	Vegas Bacon Ball	1st	12	1	*	Defending World Series champs the Alliance wins Vegas BBall for the 2nd consecutive year.
3.	PoliceSoftball.com Easton Bring Ur Real Skilz Tournament	1st	12	1	*	Perfect 6-0 in Bring Ur Real Skilz provided bat tournament. Averaged over 30 runs per game to win the event.
4.	29th. Annual Rick Hall Memorial Tournament Jacksonville
5.	1ST Annual CHP Choir Boys Tournamaent
6.	26th. Annual Virginia Beach Tournament
7.	Palm Springs POA Annual Tournament	3t	14	1	*	Tied for 3rd at PSPOA.
8.	West Palm Beach Bacon Ball	1t	11	2	*
9.	Manteca
10.	Montgomery County 11th Annual National Law Enforcement Tournament
11.	37th Annual Dayton National Police Softball Championship
12.	Lake Tahoe Classic by ElDorado Cartel
13.	Sacramento Sheriff Star Six Memorial Tournament
14.	Sterling Heights	1	18	1t	*	Perfect 7-0 to win Sterling.
15.	2nd. Annual New York Bacon Ball
16.	Buckeye Battle of the Badges Cincinnati
17.	Palm Springs Desert Classic	2	10	2	*
18.	Anne Arundel
19.	POLICESOFTBALL.COM WORLD SERIES!!!

Profile Submitted by the Team
Location	Tustin, Ca.
Formed	2001
Manager	Del Pickney
Website	www.eteamz.com/scalliance

Summary

The Alliance was formed in 2001 as the Orange County Alliance. Over the last few years we have lost/added some players to the point where now only 2 Alliance players are from the original squad. Those players are Jeff Blair and Del Pickney. We are a combo team whose goal is the play with the big boys of police softball. As we grew and picked up players we changed our name to the SoCal Alliance as it better fits the geographic region we pull from. Even though we call ourselves SoCal, we are still primarily based in Orange County as most every player on the Alliance either lives or works in OC. The Alliance is coached by Del Pickney who is a Sgt. at Tustin PD. We are a pretty balanced team that can win with defense or hitting. On our team players have to know their role for us to be successful. If a player does not know his role he wont be on the team for very long. We believe that all the top teams are pretty similar talent wise and it is the team that executes, plays fundamental softball and plays a team game will come out on top. In 2006 we were awarded a sponsorship by Easton and we proudly use and endorse Easton products. Our team has its’ own website at http://www.eteamz.com/ocalliance. We are also very proud of the fact that we started policesoftball.com. We think policesoftball.com was long overdue and should be a great tool to bring all of law enforcement softball a little bit closer together.

Tournaments Hosted

Wally Karp Memorial and the WORLD SERIES OF POLICE SOFTBALL

How We Beat You

Typically we will beat you by good defense and making sure everyone of our at bats is a smart at bat. We stay away from solo home runs and we run hard on the basepaths. Typically we will get our 20 runs a game so it is up to you to get more.

How You Beat Us

Typically we play a 5 man infield so you must hit the gaps in the OF to be successful. Use your home runs wisely as we will cheer your solo shots.

Team Highlight

Winning the Gold medal at the 2002 Arizona Police Olympics was our coming of age tourney as it was our first big tourney win over established west coast powerhouses. In 2006 we traveled to Dayton and beat the #1 ranked team in the nation (Our friends the NY Metro) twice which was another step forward for our young team. Our biggest team highlight was the great run we went on during the 2007/2008 seasons. During that time, we played in the championship game in 10 consecutive tournaments and won 8 of them. Our record during that stretch was 76-6 and it included winning the 2007 World Series of Police Softball by going 8-0 against the 45 best teams in the nation. We realize it is rare for a team to get on a run like that and we were just happy to enjoy the ride.

Team Lowlight

We are playing a game with our friends so there is never a true lowlight. If anything, the times we forget it is just a softball game and that there are bigger issues in the world would be our lowlight.

Goals

Our goal every tourney is to make the final four and if things fall right win a tourney here and there. The bottom line for us is to field a team good enough that we have a chance to beat any team on the other side of the diamond. No matter happens on the field, we want to play with the understanding that we are all brothers in blue when the game is over. We believe in playing hard on the field but once it is over it is over and then having a good time with the team we just battled.