08/17/2026
Every August, we get to do one of our favorite things all year, follow Team Canada's run at the Little League World Series and cheer them on from home. We are looking forward to covering this tournament and rooting hard for Team Canada, and we hope you will follow along with us.
So let us tell you about the team carrying the Canadian flag into this year's tournament.
Little Mountain Little League, out of Vancouver, is no stranger to Williamsport. This is the program's fourth all-time trip to the Little League World Series, with earlier appearances in 2010 and 2022, and just last year, in 2025. In fact, Little Mountain enters this year's LLWS as the defending Canadian Champion, having made the trip in back to back years, a feat that speaks to just how deep and well built this program is.
To get back to Williamsport, Little Mountain had to run a gauntlet, and they did not just survive it, they dominated it.
It started at District 1 on Vancouver's west side, where Little Mountain went a perfect 5-0, outscoring Kerrisdale, Jericho, and Dunbar by a combined 38-4, including a 10-0 win in the district final over Jericho.
From there it was on to BC Provincials, hosted by Trail Little League. This is where the story gets interesting. Playing a tough round robin against Trout Lake, Langley, Mt. Seymour, Layritz, and host Trail, Little Mountain dropped a game to very strong Langley team. It did not slow them down. They finished the provincial round robin 4-1, outscoring their opponents 36-16, and then met Langley again, this time in the championship game. Little Mountain closed the door with a 5-0 shutout to claim the provincial title, turning that early loss into a redemption story.
Then came the Canadian Championships, hosted this year in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, where Little Mountain represented BC against the best teams from every province. They did not lose a single game. They opened with a 14-1 win over the Prairies, then rolled through Ontario 10-0, Quebec 6-2, Alberta 4-1, Atlantic 4-1, and the host team 12-1. In the semifinal, they shut out Quebec, 8-0, and in the championship game, they closed out an undefeated run with a 4-0 win over Ontario to be crowned Canadian champions for the second year in a row.
Add it all up, and Little Mountain's road to Williamsport shows an overall record of 17 wins and 1 loss, with 136 runs scored and just 26 runs allowed, a run differential of plus 110. This is a team that has been tested, has responded to adversity, and has proven it can win close games and blow games open when it needs to.
Now, on to their first opponent, and this is where our boys are going to have their hands full. Because the more we dug into this team, the more we realized their path to Williamsport might be the best story in the entire international bracket.
West Seoul (B) Little League will be waiting for Team Canada on Wednesday, and their name alone does not tell you who they really are. Despite carrying the "West Seoul" label, this team is not from Seoul at all. It is an Incheon (40km from Seoul) regional coalition all-star team, built from six different Little League clubs across the city, Gyeyang-gu, Namdong-gu, Seo-gu, Seo-gu Cheongna, Yeonsu-gu, and Jung-gu Dream, all combining their best players under one roster. South Korea's national selection system splits the country into sixteen regional zones, and Incheon's coalition has competed under the West Seoul B banner since 2018. Worth mentioning that the B does not mean second string or a lesser team behind some superior West Seoul A. These are two entirely separate regional coalitions. In all that time, across eight years, an Incheon-based team had reached the national final exactly once, and lost. They had never won. They had never earned the Taegeuk mark, the national emblem worn only by South Korea's official representative team. Nobody from Incheon had ever gone to Williamsport. That changed this year, and it changed in dramatic fashion.
The team is led by head coach Kim Hong-Jip, a former KBO professional pitcher who played for the Pacific Dolphins, Hyundai Unicorns, and Hanwha Eagles before founding the Bupyeong-gu Little League program back in 2008 and spending years building up Incheon's youth baseball scene. This spring, his roster of twelve players, headlined by pitcher and leadoff hitter Hong Ji-hwan and catcher Ju Ha-jun, set out to finally break through.
At the national championships, held at Hwaseong Dream Park in April, West Seoul B first had to survive a full sixteen team, single elimination gauntlet just to reach the final four. Every regional coalition in the country was in that bracket, and one loss anywhere along the way ended your season. Incheon's team won every preliminary and quarterfinal matchup put in front of them to punch their way into the semifinal, at which point the spotlight finally found them. In the national semifinal on April 20, West Seoul B beat North Seoul A 6-1. Then, on April 21, they met East Seoul B in the championship and won 4-2, ending Incheon's eight year drought on the spot. Hong Ji-hwan was named tournament MVP for his work on the mound and at the plate, and Ju Ha-jun was named finals MVP behind the plate. In their final two games, West Seoul B went 2-0, outscoring their opponents 10-3, but that record only tells part of the story. To get there, they had to run the table through an entire bracket of the best regional coalitions South Korea had to offer. Winning that tournament earned them the right to represent all of South Korea, and that is where things got even more impressive.
At the Asia-Pacific Region Tournament, also held at Hwaseong Dream Park, West Seoul B representing South Korea went a perfect 6-0 and were, frankly, terrifying. They opened with a 14-0 win over Saudi Arabia, then a 10-0 win over New Zealand, a 12-0 win, and finally a 14-0 win over Indonesia to close out pool play. In the semifinal, they beat the Philippines 10-0. Across those five games, they had not allowed a single run.
That set up the championship, and the opponent waiting for them deserves its own introduction, because this was not just a strong team. This was Hung-Yeh Little League, out of Taitung County, Chinese Taipei, known back home as the legendary Hongye Elementary, the school whose 1968 Little League team beat a touring Japanese all-star squad 7-0, a result widely credited with sparking Taiwan's national baseball obsession and setting the country on the path to becoming one of the great powers in this sport's history. This year's Hongye squad had ended a twenty year national championship drought of their own to reach the regional tournament, then rolled through it, beating the Philippines 10-0, Guam 19-0, Thailand 17-0, Hong Kong 8-0, and China 9-0, then blowing past New Zealand 13-2 in the semifinal. Six wins, five of them by ten runs or more, a run differential of plus 72, even better than South Korea's own. And this was the same country that had won the Asia-Pacific region four straight years running, sending Tung-Yuan Little League all the way to the Little League World Series title just last summer, where they beat the American champion 7-0 in the final to become world champions. That memory was still fresh for everyone in that stadium.
Ahead of the game, Coach Kim struck a tone that says a lot about how he runs this team. "Fortunately, the children, who have achieved good results in the region, don't seem to get too nervous in big games," he said. "I don't want to put pressure on them, so I try to tell them to laugh a lot and enjoy themselves. I hope they achieve good results in the tournament and that this competition remains a fond memory for them." He was a little more direct about the assignment in front of them too, adding with a laugh, "I wish the kids could play baseball with smiles. Let's just beat Taiwan."
The championship game lived up to every bit of that billing. South Korea broke a scoreless tie in the top of the third. Chinese Taipei answered immediately in the bottom half to tie it 1-1. With the bases loaded and one out, Korean ace Hong Ji-hwan bore down and struck out the next two batters to keep the damage to a single run. South Korea retook the lead in the top of the fifth on an inside the park home run, then added an insurance run in the sixth on a leadoff walk and a well executed sacrifice bunt. Closer Maeng Jae-hyun came on in the bottom of the sixth and induced a game ending double play to seal it. Final score, 3-1. Coach Kim was shown in tears on the broadcast afterward. It was South Korea's first Little League World Series berth in seven years.
Put the whole path together, domestic tournament and international regional combined, and West Seoul B enters Williamsport having gone 8-0, outscoring their opponents 73 to 4, a run differential of plus 69, not including their qualifying games, with their only real test coming against the single best team they could have possibly faced, and coming through it anyway.
We think it is worth pausing on all of this, because it is easy to focus only on the team we are cheering for. But this is exactly what makes Little League special. Somewhere in Incheon, six youth clubs that had never produced a national team came together and finally broke through after eight years of trying. Somewhere in Taitung County, a school with barely a hundred students chased down a national title that had eluded their community for twenty years. In Vancouver, a program we know well fought through a tough provincial round robin and turned a single loss into a championship. Thousands of teams across the world, on every continent, all competed this summer for a chance to reach the very same tournament, in the very same small town in Pennsylvania. That story deserves to be told for every team that walks onto that field, not just the one wearing the Canadian jersey.
Two teams, two remarkable paths, both arriving in Williamsport having been tested and having answered. Little Mountain has shown they can grind through adversity and come out the other side. West Seoul has shown they can break an eight year drought and then beat the best team in a stacked region on the biggest stage available to them. Something has to give on Wednesday.
Canada vs. Asia-Pacific, goes Wednesday at 2:00 PM PST on ESPN and TSN where available.
From all of us at National Little League, good luck, Little Mountain. Go Canada!!
