To put the magical postseason accomplishments of the Santa Cruz Little League 8-10-year-old All-Stars in the proper perspective, it’s helpful to turn back the calendar several years.
To 2018, when Santa Cruz took an all-star team down to Douglas for the District 8 Tournament.
“That was one of the first years we tried to do an All-Star team, and we got humiliated,” head coach Evan Raley recalls. “It left a sour taste in some of the parents’ mouths: ‘We can’t compete with these teams; we don’t want to embarrass our kids.’”
And so Santa Cruz stopped sending a team to the district tournament. Understandable. With a smaller pool of players than any other league in the district, Santa Cruz didn’t have the luxury of holding All-Star tryouts and assembling a team of the league’s best players. It was lucky if it could scrape together nine available players. By way of comparison, Sierra Vista had four full teams playing at the 8-10 age level from which to pull its All-Stars.
But the journey from humiliation in 2018 to winning the district championship in 2025, followed by two wins in the state tournament—thus becoming one of the top eight teams in the state— wasn’t happenstance.
Under the guidance of league president Aaron Thomas and Raley, in 2019 Santa Cruz began the methodical process of developing the skills needed to compete with other teams in the district.
“It took that time period to develop these kids so that we can show up and we can compete,” Raley said.
“Myself and Aaron have coached every one of these kids since T-ball. Since they’ve been 4 to 5 years old, we’ve been running practice pretty similarly. It didn’t happen over a two- or three-month period. It happened over a four- or five-year period.”
Santa Cruz returned to the district tournament in 2024. It didn’t win a game, but it didn’t get humiliated either.
“Last year we almost won a game,” Thomas said. “We had a tough loss, but we learned what we needed to do to prepare, and they were definitely ready this year. We knew we had a special group, even if we didn’t expect to go as far as we did.”
The continuity in working with a small number of kids from T-ball through coach-pitch to competitive pitching resulted in a team that was small in size and stature but strong in fundamentals.
“That’s one of our goals,” Thomas said. “We meet as coaches at the start of the season and talk about what we want to work on. To teach fundamentally sound baseball, how to play the game the right way.”
When the season began in March, Raley was greeted by five kids who had played baseball at a competitive level: 10-year-olds Jax Raley, Owen Thomas, Brantley Orona and Hatley Mathews, and 9-year-old Chato Padilla. The rest of the team—Ty Peterson, Atlas Bohm, Jhett Hubbell, Hays Thomas—were graduates from coach-pitch.
“The bottom half of the lineup had never seen live pitching before,” Raley said. “The most competitive baseball they had played was coach-pitch. The amount of improvement they showed was immeasurable.”
A major challenge/opportunity with a roster of nine was developing enough pitching to withstand playing on a nearly every-day basis in a tournament.
“We were developing our youngest players, teaching them how to pitch, because at some point, we’re going to have to use them,” Raley said. “It forced us to develop all our kids and kept everybody engaged.”
Everything fell into place over a three-week stretch starting in late June. Santa Cruz took the field on June 25 at Lions Park in Benson for its District 8 tournament opener with a modest goal: Win one game during the course of the double-elimination tournament.
It needed just one crack at it: Santa Cruz 9, Willcox 4. Followed by a 5-4 win over Sierra Vista.
“We figured we had a good shot at Willcox, but after we handled that game we had Sierra Vista, one of the larger teams in the district,” Raley said. “I thought this is going to be a tough one. When we went out and beat them, it was like ‘wow, we’re here to play.'”
Getting knocked into the loser’s bracket by a 17-16 loss to Douglas didn’t derail Santa Cruz’s momentum. The team bounced back with an 8-7 win over San Pedro Valley, the host team, and then beat Douglas twice to claim the district title and advance to state. Instead of one win, the “Mighty Nine”—a nickname coined by the players’ parents—had rattled off five.
“When we were able to beat Benson, I thought we’ve come too far, let’s go win this thing,” Raley said. “I kept preaching to the guys: You deserve to be here. You deserve to win.”
Bigger challenges awaited in the state tournament, with opponents from the state’s major metropolitan areas—some with 100 or more players in their league—but Santa Cruz wasn’t intimidated. (“They didn’t know they couldn’t win,” Thomas said.) The Mighty Nine pulled off victories over Flagstaff and Arcadia before its season finally ended with a loss to Goodyear, finishing the postseason with a 7-3 record.
“We set a goal of achieving this from the first day of practice, starting back in March,” Raley said. “The kids bought into the process of showing up every day, putting the work in, getting better.
“By the time we got to district, they had already developed that winning mindset. From the very first game, I don’t think they cared or understood that Willcox was taking the best kids out of their league, that they were playing against an All-Star team. They didn’t care who they were playing against.”
Thomas pointed out that the league had 75 players, ranging in age from 4 to 12, this season, its largest turnout ever. The four 10-year-olds will graduate into the Major League age bracket next year, and he’s hopeful Santa Cruz can field an All-Star team at that level as well as 8-to-10 (minors).
Thomas and Raley both expressed appreciation for the community support and the commitment made not only by the players but their families.
“When I look at successful programs, it takes everybody coming together,” Raley said.
Added Thomas: “We’ve never struggled for community support, whether it’s sponsoring a shirt, sponsoring a team, getting us the right equipment. Having the fans out there and all the community support really meant a lot to the kids.”