Here's a few thoughts based upon the Stingrays tournament, which was a great, great experience for the Buckeye Heat '95 team. Heat lost in pool play to Lasers Gold 8-3 (Gold hit the ball hard, Heat had too many defensive errors, and Heat just wasn't patient at the plate) and beat the younger Stingrays team 4-3. Then in the first round of elimination Heat played extremely well but lost 4-2 to the Cincy Doom '95, who clearly deserves one of the top three spots in the poll. One of the Heat pitchers came of age in that game, as she gave up only 1-2 earned runs (I think it was only 1, but I don't have the stats handy right now) against this great team. In the loser's bracket we played Lasers Gold again. Through 4 innings both teams played very very good defense and the score was 1-1. Lasers scored four in the 5th inning and that one is on the Heat coaches as we probably should have gone earlier in the inning to relief. Heat scored one in the 6th and time expired, giving Gold a 5-2 victory.
We didn't get to see the new and improved older Stingrays team play, but if they beat Doom '95 twice in championship play, then they are quite a team and probably significantly improved over the team we beat at Compuware. Classics also showed very well at Stingrays, with a big comeback win against Lasers Gold in the loser's bracket.
Heat played Lasers Silver at GAPSS and while we edged them out in that game and lost twice to Gold at Stingrays, I believe that Silver is a tad better than Gold, mainly because of pitching. But I'm splitting the proverbial hair quite finely here.
So while I haven't decided a specific order yet, I've got the Stingrays-Caton, Doom '95, and Ice Silver (who we lost to in the semis at Compuware) in my top three, with the two Lasers teams and the Classics in the next tier.
One final thought: Buckeye Heat '95 may drop out of the Top 10 in The Ringer's vaunted poll based on the losses at the Stingrays tournaments, but that's a trade-off I'll take any day. (Sorry Ringer). What a great experience to play some tight games against Ohio's best; I've got to believe that even with the losses ours is a much more confident team for having played. We almost assuredly won't be able to make the cut for the Stingrays field when we move up to 14U next year and we will definitely miss the buzz of playing in such elite and classy company. [Just had a thought: a round-robin friendly the week of Stingrays next year, with all the Ohio 13U teams who played in Stingrays 12U in 2008 but didn't make the cut for 14U 2009?? (and Ice Silver and Lasers Silver getting sponsor's exemptions?)].
