Skip to main content

2022 St. Pete/Clearwater Elite Invitational

The 2022 edition of the St. Pete/Clearwater Elite Invitational is underway. Sixteen teams are participating in the event, which runs through Sunday. Nationally ranked teams in the field (based on the ESPN.com/USA Softball poll) include No. 3 UCLA, No. 5 Washington, No. 6 Florida State, No. 7 Oklahoma State, No. 9 Texas, No. 12 Clemson, No. 15 Tennessee, No. 16 Michigan, No. 22 LSU, No. 23 Northwestern, No. 24 Central Florida, and No. 25 Auburn. From my perusal of several teams' schedules, each team will play between 4-6 games against prescheduled opponents (i.e., it's not a tournament in the sense of winning teams advancing to further rounds and losing teams being eliminated). Selected games will be televised on the ESPN Family of Networks.

UPDATE: ESPN.com has a detailed preview of all the teams in the Elite Invitational.

Popular posts from this blog

Few minutes after 6:00 pm Central: We now have our eighth team for the Women's College World Series, Oregon State (in the postings below, all WCWS qualifiers are depicted in bold). The Beavers defeated Cal 3-0 and then 1-0 today, to take the teams' super-regional series 2-1. 4:40 pm Central: We have the identities of two more teams going to the WCWS (bringing the total to seven), but Oregon State has stayed alive against Cal, forcing a third and deciding game to determine the one remaining team for the World Series. Leave it to the Beavers! Here are the two teams (in bold) that have earned bids to Oklahoma City thus far today: Tennessee , which edged Michigan 1-0 in what must have been a very dramatic finish to those who saw it live. The reason I say must have been is that ESPN cut away to show a live Barry Bonds at-bat in his quest for 715 home runs, a number that would surpass Babe Ruth for second on the all-time list. Sure enough, Bonds blasted one deep into the c...

2026 WCWS Championship Game 2

Top 1 (T1) Texas is the visitor tonight... Kayden Henry leading off... Line single to right, bringing up Katie Stewart, who has homered in her last four games and has 31 on the season... As ESPN announcers note, home-plate ump showing early signs of giving Canady the high strike... Stewart pop-up near home for first out... Viviana Martinez fouls out near third base, two down... Reese Atwood up... Henry steals second; throw goes into center, but Henry can't advance further... Atwood grounds back to Canady to end the half-inning... Bottom 1 (B1) Mia Williams grounds to third for first out... Mihyia Davis, who homered in the first last night, HBP... Lauren Allred up... K looking for two outs... Jackie Lis up... Davis steals second... Lis with hard, sinking liner to center, but Henry crouches down to snare it in the air... T2 Leighann Goode up for Texas... Grounds back to Canady for first out... Hannah Wells K swinging for second out... Kaiah Altmeyer ground to short for final out... B...

2026 WCWS Championship Game 1

 Game 1 of the championship series is about to get underway. Texas will be the home team... Top 1 (T1) Teagan Kavan strikes out Mia Williams to get things started... Mihyia Davis homers to left for a quick 1-0 Raider lead (can't find video)... Nothing further for Tech...  Bottom 1 (B1) Kayden Henry leads off with bunt single off of Raider starter Kaitlyn Terry... Katie Stewart homers to center ( video ) to put Longhorns up 2-1... Last year's TTU-Texas championship opener was a pitchers' duel... This year, not so much...Viviana Martinez singles up the middle... Will we see NiJaree Canady soon, as Tech coach Gerry Glasco has been frequently shuffling his pitchers?... Sticking with Terry... Fielder's choice and fly-out for first two outs... Hannah Wells singles, putting runners at the corners with two out... Now Canady's coming in... Kaiah Altmeyer with infield single, 3-1 Longhorns with runners on first and second... Ashton Maloney triples and suddenly it's 5-1 Te...