From Semifinalists to Champions: The Two-Year Climb of the USVI 18U Program

The 2026 world championship didn't come out of nowhere. It took two summers.

In August 2025, the U.S. Virgin Islands Nike RBI 18U team arrived at the Jackie Robinson Training Complex in Vero Beach, Florida, as the Caribbean regional champion. Most of the field had never seen them play. The Virgin Islands opened by beating the Southeast Regional champion Atlanta Braves Nike RBI team.

The next day they lost to the Detroit Tigers RBI Softball 18U, which put them on the edge of elimination in a double-elimination bracket. Then they won two must-win games, against the White Sox Nike RBI 18U and Atlanta, to reach the semifinals. MLB.com called it an improbable run. Detroit went on to win the 2025 title.

That 2025 roster included many of the players who finished the job a year later: Alahya Jackson, Mekaela Richardson, Jaimia Cochrane, Kleniya Titus, Rashani Sackey, Brielle Creque, Alina Muhammad, Isabella Viruet, Keira Frazier and Ryann Giddins.

In 2026 the team came back stronger. They went 5–0 at the Caribbean Regional in June, beating Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and returned to Vero Beach as one of eight teams and the only one from a U.S. territory.

The World Series gave them one more test. After wins over Royals Elite RBI and the Atlanta Braves, they lost a winner's-bracket heartbreaker to Houston on a walk-off home run in the eighth inning. That afternoon, facing elimination, they beat the Detroit Tigers program that had beaten them in 2025 and gone on to win that year's title, 4–3. The next day they beat Houston 3–1 for the championship.

The coaching staff stayed together across both runs: manager Elroy Hill and coaches Richard Clendinen, Brock Creque and Inocencia Bermudez, with the Department of Sports, Parks and Recreation as sponsor.

"A championship like this does not happen because of one game or one great play," Governor Albert Bryan Jr. said after the title. Two years of work bear that out.