It was a great fall season for the 8u division, with many of these teams experiencing travel ball for the first time. Although this age group doesn’t have the same volume of teams as the older age groups, there are certainly numerous quality teams all across the state. West Raleigh Blue ended the year our #1 team in 8u. These kids have been playing together a while, so may have a leg up on other 8u travel teams because of their experience together. They went 11-1 in Top Gun play, with their only loss coming in an 11-9 loss to the Dirtbags Black. They won two top gun tournaments including the 8u Winter World Series to earn our top spot. The Carolina Threshers finished in our #2 spot this fall after finishing 24-1 this fall with their only loss coming in the finals of the Winter World Series in a 4-2 loss to West Raleigh Blue. They went 2-0 this fall against #3 Dirtbags Black, and although t was really close between the Threshers and West Raleigh for the top spot, we gave the edge to West Raleigh because of their WWS title and the head-to-head victory over the Threshers. The Dirtbags Black finished #3 in our rankings this fall after going 10-4 in Top Gun play. They lost twice to the Carolina Threshers and went 1-1 against West Raleigh this fall. The South Charlotte Cardinals finished the fall in our #4 slot after a 14-2 fall campaign. The only thing separating these guys from the top 3 is a couple of late season losses at the USSSA Beast of the East and perhaps a slightly lower quality of schedule (although this is, admittedly, highly debatable). They did have a win over our #5 team, East Rowan and 3 wins over our #6 team, the Lake Norman Vipers, but in our estimation the top 3 teams are on a slightly higher level right now. East Rowan played predominately USSSA this fall, where they went 8-1, including a win over the G-Town Pirates (SC), who won the 8u USSSA Beast of the East and two wins over a very good Tega Cay Titans (SC). East Rowan also went 4-0 in an AAU tournament in Clemmons where they defeated #8 Spartans – Allen. The Lake Norman Vipers finished #6 in our rankings after going 20-3 this fall. All 3 of their losses came at the hands of the South Charlotte Cardinals and they scored two wins over the Tega Cay Titans this fall.
At this point I’d like to interject that I hope you can see the difficulty in trying to put rankings like this together. Because teams, especially at the 8u level, predominately play other teams within their own locality or region, it is hard to gauge whether a win over East Rowan is more or less impressive than a win over the Dirtbags Black. In an ideal world, rankings such as these could spur some of the top teams from different regions (e.g. Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, mountains, beach, etc.) to seek each other out. They may not be as feasible at the 8u level, where there is usually enough competition locally to play competitive games and tournaments.
Finishing at #7 in our rankings this fall was Carolina Vandals. The Vandals played predominately AAU tournaments this fall and went 18-3. They did not face nearly the same level of competition as our top teams, but faired quite well against the competition they did face. Spartans – Allen was one of the main competitors to the Vandals in AAU play in Clemmons this year, and finished the fall in our #8 slot. The Spartans finished 12-4 this fall including splitting two games against #9 Summerfield Stars. The Summerfield Stars had a great fall, going 17-4 (11-1 in USSSA play, 6-3 in AAU games) including a win over #8 Spartans – Allen. Rounding out the top 10 this fall are the FV Wildcats. They didn’t play much, going 7-2 this fall, but they did win the D3 Top Gun WWS.
We hope to expand the 8u rankings to 20 teams in the Spring, as more teams play more games. This was a fun age division and there are some really excellent teams. Congrats to West Raleigh for taking our top spot this fall.