Who’s No. 1 in Texas? The Answer Will Impact Who’s National Champion This Year!

Teams losing a game but continuing to play on is not a new phenomenon in the Texas high school state championships. It happens when a team loses in a best-of-three series but still wins the series and advances to the next round.

It happened last week to national No. 1 Melissa in the Class 5A D1 playoffs. The Cardinals lost in the first game of a series, 2-0, to Lake Belton, but they bounced back to beat Lake Belton twice, 9-2 and 10-0, and will now meet Aledo in the Class 5A D1 semifinals (the first game of a best-of-three series happened on Wednesday night and Melissa won, 15-4).

So the big question for the national rankings is whether that one loss should result in a change at the top.

The other team from Texas that has been near the top, No. 2 Lake Creek, did not lose in one of its playoff games last week. The Lions are in the Class 5A D2 playoffs and beat Nederland twice, 10-0 and 9-1. They also improved to 34-0 overall.

They are in a best-of-three semifinal series that starts on Thursday vs Rouse.

𝑾𝑨𝑲𝑬 𝑼𝑷 𝑳𝑰𝑶𝑵𝑺, 𝑰𝑻’𝑺 𝑮𝑨𝑴𝑬𝑫𝑨𝒀! pic.twitter.com/slEt5iXPov

— Lake Creek Softball (@LakeCreek_SB) May 22, 2025

Anyone who thinks it’s an easy call to put either Melissa or Lake Creek on top has never compiled national rankings! The computer rankings have Lake Creek first, but the MaxPreps rankings kept Melissa at No. 1.

The difference for us is that the other three teams in the final four in the Texas 5A D1 playoffs besides Melissa are national No. 10 Barbers Hill. Aledo also comes into the series vs Melissa at 30-3 while the other semifinalist is 30-3 Smithson Valley.

The reasoning is that if Melissa doesn’t lose any more than the one game and wins its state title, it will have come in a slightly tougher final series of games than Lake Creek is playing.

The bottom line is that it’s just too bad that the two Texas super teams won’t play each other this season and a new playoff format put the two of them in different divisions.

With Melissa staying put in the No. 1 position, the rest of the top five in this week’s rankings stayed the same as well.

Orange Beach of Alabama, which was No. 1 in last year’s final Super 70, capped another stellar season with a 9-2 win over Curry of Jasper last week to win its fifth straight state title. This year’s team won in Class 4A for the third time after it won it all in Class 2A in 2021 and 2022.

While the Makos did get avenging wins over the two teams it lost games to this season and did knock off No. 4 Doral Academy of Florida to win the Kissimmee Klassic tourney in April, they are going to need the two Texas teams to both lose games for them to be No. 1 in the nation again.

Katie King was named tourney MVP for Orange Beach for her state tourney outings, including going 2-for-4 with two runs scored in the final. Jayde Palmer also had two hits and three RBI vs Curry, which had the game tied at 2-2 in the fourth inning.

One of the teams that handed a loss to Orange Beach, Thompson of Alabaster (Ala.), captured the Class 7A state title last week. The Warriors did it the hard way, by winning six straight elimination games in the double-elimination formatted playoffs. The title game, though, wasn’t stressful as Thompson blanked Tuscaloosa County, 9-0.

There also were state championships held just earlier this week in Arizona. In the Class 5A final, Desert Mountain of Scottsdale made it three state titles in a row and also ended an outstanding 30-1-1 season with a 4-0 victory over Canyon del Oro of Tucson.

Lilly “Goose” Goodwin, a junior who was the State Player of the Year as a sophomore, shined with 17 strikeouts and a five-hitter and also drove in the first two runs for the Wolves. Zoe Horning also had a pair of doubles and two RBI.

Desert Mountain moved up from No. 14 to No. 13 in this week’s Super 70, but has a chance to move up a lot as other states like California, Texas and Florida complete the playoffs.

Two teams that had to drop out of the top 10 in this week’s rankings were previous No. 6 Montverde Academy of Florida and previous No. 9 Rosary of Fullerton, Calif.

Montverde lost to Trinity Catholic in the Class 2A state playoffs. Rosary fell to El Modena of Orange in the second round of the CIF Southern Section D1 playoffs. The quarterfinals of the CIFSS D1 playoffs were played on Wednesday and were not included in this week’s rankings.

— Mark Tennis of CalHiSports.com for Line Drive Softball

 *****

(Previous rank in parentheses)
(After games of Tuesday, May 20 2025)
* Indicates season complete.
** Forfeit wins, losses not included

1. (1) Melissa (Melissa, Texas) 37-1

2. (2) Lake Creek (Montgomery, Texas) 34-0

3. (3) Orange Beach (Orange Beach, Ala.) 47-2*

4. (4) Doral Academy (Doral, Fla.) 29-1

5. (5) Summerville (Summerville, S.C.) 31-0

6. (7) Forney (Forney, Texas) 32-1-1

7. (8) Del Oro (Loomis, Calif.) 28-1

8. (13) Norco (Norco, Calif.) 26-3

9. (17) Calvary Christian (Clearwater, Fla.) 29-1

10. (10) Barbers Hill (Mt. Belvieu, Texas) 34-3

Scroll down to see the rest of the Top 50 plus 20 more teams on the bubble…