PRINCE GEORGE, British Columbia, Canada -- The USA Baseball National Team (Collegiate), which included Elon head coach Mike Kennedy as the squad's pitching coach, concluded its summer with an 8-1 victory over Germany in the final game of the 2009 Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline World Baseball Challenge at Prince George Citizen Field on Sunday. Team USA finished the summer with a 19-5 overall record.
In the World Baseball Challenge, the Americans went 6-1 with two victories over Canada (5-2 and 1-0) and one each over the Bahamas (8-1), the Prince George Axemen (10-2), Team British Columbia (12-2) and Germany. The win in the title game avenged Team USA's lone loss in the tournament, a 6-3 defeat at the hands of the Germans.
The title game saw Drew Pomeranz take a no-hitter into the seventh inning to lead Team USA to the title, despite falling behind 1-0 in the first inning.
Under Kennedy's guidance, Team USA's pitching staff recorded a 2.16 ERA in the squad's 24 games this summer. In 212.2 innings, the staff surrendered 51 earned runs on just 118 hits. The pitchers also fanned 282 hitters and held opponents to a .164 batting average.
The summer began with five exhibition games against Canada which were played in Cary and Durham, N.C. The Americans swept the five games before sweeping four games against Guatemala.
After a 4-1 win over the New England Collegiate Baseball League All-Stars in New Hampshire and a victory over Holyoke in Massachusetts, the Americans headed to Japan for a five-game series.
The 37th USA vs. Japan Collegiate All-Star Championship took place a multiple sites around Japan. The Americans took the opener 3-0 before dropping a 7-5 decision in Tokyo. The USA reclaimed the series edge with an 8-4 win before the Japanese notched the series at 2-2 with an 8-3 victory. The deciding game went 11 innings, but saw Team USA on the short end of an 8-7 score.
From there, Team USA went on to Canada for the World Baseball Challenge.
-- ELON --
