Florida Memorial

The Florida Memorial University Lions (Miami Gardens, FL), who went 18-70 over the past two seasons, are 17-9 as of the day this was published, with a series sweep of Warner. They are the top-ranked team in the Black College Nine's small school poll. They are going into a Sun Conference series at Ave Maria (Paywalled streaming video).

Their Coach is Tino Burgos, who is in his second season. He played college ball at Florida International, and coached at Hialeah Gardens Senior High School for eight years.

The player that is turning heads for the Lions is DH Sergio Chil, who came to Florida Memorial from Havana via ASA College in Miami. A junior, he is batting .488.

Chil's relocation to Miami was facilitated by Rangers scout Jose Rafael Fernandez, who is a good friend of Chil's father. Prior to going to ASA College, he was a student at Mártires de Barbados, a school in Havana for high performance athletes. He describes his training there as "strong and intense". During his first season at ASA College, he batted .450. This season, he has done a lot of work in the batting cage with hitting coach Yunieski Gurriel, learning to let the pitches come to him and hit more to right field. He says that he gets a lot of positive energy from Coach Burgos.