The Ceres Blaze Red nine-and-under travel baseball team reached unprecedented heights this season.

The Blaze advanced to the Pony Baseball Mustang-9 West Zone Championships, held July 20-23 in Walnut, Calif.
"This is the first time a Ceres team has made it this far," head coach Gabriel Cordova said. "It's pretty much the Word Series for our age group. That's impressive. We had an amazing season. We surpassed any expectations that we had."

The Blaze did not place at the eight-team West Zone tournament.

Ceres won one of its three games.

The Blaze posted a 12-8 win over the Walnut All-Stars and lost 7-1 to quarterfinalist San Francisco Youth Baseball League on July 21.

Ceres opened the tourney with a 12-3 loss to runner-up Los Alamitos on July 20.

All three games were webcast live on walnutponybaseball.org.

"Everyone in Walnut wanted to know where we were from," Cordova said. "We were blown away by the attention. It was an amazing experience for all of us."

The Blaze compiled a 28-15 record this year.

Ceres won titles at the Bel Passi Pony Regional Tournament, Bel Passi Invitational, Pedretti Park Memorial Weekend Classic and Rainbow Fields TPR Spring Classic.

"We prepared these kids for next year," Cordova said. "It's been an amazing journey. They lived up to their name. A blaze started and it kept burning. I couldn't be prouder of them."

Ceres competed with a 13-person roster: Isac Cordova, Daniel Andrade, Cameron Lopez, Andrew Brown, Andres Lujan, Victor Magana, Phoenix Jackson, Isaac Sosa, Eli Beltran, Alejandro Godoy, Xavier Valencia, Isaac Rodriguez and Ryan Ashby.

The Blaze compiled a 4-2 record on their way to a runner-up finish at the West Zone-Norcal Super Region Tournament earlier this month in Brentwood.

"The sky is the limit for this group of boys," Cordova said. "They're a special bunch. They have so much heart and resiliency."