Stacked National’s pitching staff is exactly as its name implies — stacked.

The team impressively punched its ticket to the gold medal game at the 15U National Team Championships in Arizona after pulling off not one, but two shutouts in the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds of the tournament.

After warding off CBA Bulldogs National in the quarters with an 12-0 victory, and storming past 5 Star Arizona in an 8-0 rout in the semifinals, Stacked National will face Next Level Baseball in the highly anticipated championship bout.

“It feels great,” said coach Robert Ybarra. “They’ve been working hard and a lot of the guys had successful high school seasons. So [we’re] just ready to go, but it feels good.”

To get there, though, Stacked stymied a slew of talented teams with some expert-level pitching. What’s even more impressive, however, is that the squad only used two arms to get just as many wins. Both starting pitchers Paxton Czubeck and Aidan Dahlk threw complete games. Czubeck threw four scoreless frames against CBA, and Dahlk carried his team to the championship with five innings of shutout ball while their offenses run-ruled each team.

Against CBA, Czubeck captained his squad on the mound, frustrating the Bulldogs by only allowing one walk and three hits. He also tallied three punchouts, and of course, held his opponents scoreless in his team’s four-inning, run-rule victory.

Just a couple hours later with Dahlk, it was more of the same.

Dahlk threw five innings of shutout baseball against the formidable 5 Star Arizona. Holding his opposition’s offense to just four hits while offering three free passes, Dahlk specialized in forcing soft contact to let his defense behind him get the job done.

“He throws a hard two-seam, a hard slider,” Ybarra said. “So it's good to have that and really get those hitters to hit the ball down into the ground, and it helps when you have a good infield and play clean ball.”

Letting his defense work, Dahlk only threw two strikeouts — a trait that Dahlk relishes in.

“When I'm pitching out there, I don't really go for K’s, I don't really go for strikeouts,” Dahlk said. “I just want to get my defense out there and limit the pitch count so I'm able to go longer.”

While Dahlk, Czubeck and their defenses worked, Stacked National’s offense quickly and ruthlessly took care of business in order to put the two run-rules into effect. Ybarra harped back to the basics of his team’s approach in the box and smart baserunning.

“Just having a good approach — getting into hitting counts that helps and just squaring the ball up,” Ybarra said. “We do a pretty good job on the bases, try to play smart, but play fast.”

Now, Stacked National looks to make it all happen one more time in the most important game of the tournament — the gold medal game. And like its quarter and semifinal games, Stacked’s success will start and finish with its performance on the mound.

However, Stacked National may have one more ace up its sleeve for the final round.

“It's going to start with the mound,” said Ybarra. “We have a guy who's going to be able to be available for the game tomorrow, so we like our chances.”

Stacked has its eyes set on one more win, one more shutout, and a handful of gold medals, and Dahlk and company like their chances.

“If we played the same way we did today, I mean, we're taking it,” Dahlk said. “Yeah, we got the gold.”