More than 300 of the top travel ball teams in the nation have assembled in Shawnee, Kansas for the four-day Top Gun Invitational broken into the Maverick (214 teams) and Viper (96 teams) divisions.

Pool games are being held today (Thursday, June 13, 2024) and tomorrow with the bracket games starting Saturday and running through the finals on Sunday.

Right off the gate, there were matchups between elite programs—at 10 am, for example, at the Mid-American Sports Complex, the primary location of the five sites for the 51 fields—Field 9 saw the Beverly Bandits 16U – Moran team facing OC Batbusters 16U – Lara while Field 10, right across the sidewalk, saw Unity 16U – Johnson take on the Birmingham Thunderbolts 2026/2027 – Thompson team.

Woof… those organizations combined have more travel ball national championships than you have fingers and toes.

And right that game were many other top club organizations from across the country—all at Mid-America Sports Complex—took the all-turf fields including teams from programs as wide-ranging as the Rhode Island Thunder to the Grapettes (Calif.) to the Mojo (Tennessee) to the Ohio Hawks… and many, many programs in-between.

Not surprisingly, at the Bolts vs. Unity game alone, there were college coaches from Arizona State, Texas, Georgia, Nebraska, Duke (head coach Marissa Young), Dartmouth, George Mason and several more.

At the end of the day, Top Gun officials noted that over 115 college coaches had signed in and some schools had as many as three, even four, coaches on site. Most were assistants, but five schools—Missouri, LSU, Duke, Michigan and Texas A&M (that we know of)—had head coaches in attendance.

And that was on Day 1; more and more college coaches are expected over the next three days leading up to Saturday’s title games.

In its 11^th year, the Top Gun Invitational is bigger and better than ever, according to Co-Head Jeremy McDowell who runs the event annually with co-head Robb Behymer.

“The event is the deepest we’ve ever had,” McDowell told Line Drive Softball earlier today, “and the quality of athletic talent is so deep, you have some college programs sending three, even four coaches.”

There are softball athletes from ages 18U down to 10U but if you’re looking to be where the college coaches are, you’ll see many tracking the 2026 players as the 2024’s are signed and many ‘25’s have already finalized where they’ll play at the next level.

Overall, the nearly 4,000 players represent 36 different states, literally from Maine to Hawaii, and entrance to Top Gun is so stringent that hundreds of teams are turned away each year.

The list of sponsors supporting the Top Gun Invitational are as deep as the field itself with a baker’s dozen of top regional and national companies in attendance:

• Hy Vee Grocery Stores
• MB2 Sports (apparel)
• Dudley (Top Gun is a distributor for the softball and bat company)
• Blast Motion
• Zibek (laser technology)
• Oakley (T also a distributor)
• Body Mind Spirit (BMS, athletic mental health)
• Dick’s Sporting Goods
• Lizard Skins (bat grips)
• Rip-it
• Enterprise Rental Car
• QuikTrip (national convenience stores based out of Tulsa)
• DO Sports (provider of staff gear and hats)

DO Apparel

The last sponsor on the above list, DO Apparel, has an interesting story.

Co-Owner Danny McKae grew up playing three sports in Dearborn, Michigan and was a pretty good football player—a talented receiver who played at Division II school Wayne State in Detroit.

As he was growing up in Dearborn, his family ran Little League tournaments and camps and had the connections with an existing t-shirt company at the time that went on the market to be sold.

Danny and his brother Matt pitched in to buy the small company and, before too long, had flipped into focusing on team apparel, uniforms and, ultimately, “spirit wear” and, as Danny puts it: “Anything you need to outfit your team, from head to toe, and we’ve never wavered off of that.”

Today, Danny lives in Livonia, Mich. just west of Detroit and has helped grow the company to employ about 50 people and has really created a niche for itself as a company that makes everything in the U.S. and can turn around product orders and get the apparel to buyers in as little as two days.

That happened just this week for the Top Gun Elite Event where DO Apparel di over 200 player jerseys with the last names on the back, but when four new players signed up on Monday to attend the Wednesday workout, the jerseys were impressively produced, shipped and in the athletes’ hands less than 48 hours later.

Today, all the DO Apparel stores are online and the company promotes its “team stores” for uniforms and spirit wear all across the East Coast and has built solid ties in the softball market.

DO Apparel is a sponsor of this week’s Top Gun Invitational as well as being a sponsor and partner in several national fastpitch events including PGF in the Southeast and with the Beverly Bandits run by Bill Conroy out of Chicago.

And Danny is quick to add that his company is not done advancing in the softball market.

“We encourage any organizations large or small to look at our service, speed and quality,” he concludes, “as we continue to add great partners across the softball community.”

More News & Notes

*** We talked to the parent of a South Carolina commit who admitted there was a lot of uncertainty with the coaching change at USC from Bev Smith to newly hired Ashley Chastain.

What’s interesting is that, once other colleges learned of the change for the Gamecocks, they reached out to this player’s club coach and family in droves. Like double-digit numbers of Power 5 schools, including ones that had previously recruiting the talented athlete.

As the parent said:

“We haven’t heard from the school but are supposed to talk to the new coach tonight.”

*** With a tournament as large of Top Gun, there are bound to be small injuries—from bee stings (happened today) to players with small bumps and bruises. But the scariest medical incident today happened when an umpire suffered from heat stroke and had to be checked by paramedics.

Kudos to the Top Gun staff for being on top of it having the ailing umpire treated immediately. Here’s to hoping there won’t be many more—if any—medical scares like this one.

*** Yesterday at the Top Gun Invitational National Elite Showcase, Missouri standout pitcher Taylor Pannell spoke to the athletes at the event.

Today, fellow Power 5 hurler Jordy Bahl of Nebraska was in attendance and for two hours was at the Oakley booth where she talked to players, parents and coaches as well as posed for photos and signed autographs.

It’s a great sign for the sport when these two top players are willing to take time to talk to young athletes who want to be their shoes. Both Taylor and Taylor were friendly and talkative to their young fans.

— Brentt Eads/Line Drive Softball

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Thursday, June 13, 2024 Game Results

12U

14U

16U Maverick

16U Viper

18U Maverick

18U Viper