CARY, N.C. — One of the biggest turnaround stories in the USA eBaseball™ Power League (EPL) in WBSC eBASEBALL™: POWER PROS in its 2025 season culminated in a championship Sunday night.

JonsCopyright won the league’s Summit Series Championship, taking the best-of-five championship 3-1 over third-seed Compass. The California native sported an impressive 23-4 record in the regular season, two games better than the second- and third-place teams, and set league records for wins (23), runs scored (132), home runs (54), and slugging percentage (.510) in the nine-week regular season. He went on to defeat eight-seed MCscales and four-seed SlimeFall en route to the championship.

With the win, he becomes the first top-seeded player to ever win the Summit Series Championship, dating back to the unaffiliated versions of the league in 2023. By virtue of being the regular season champion, he has wrapped up one of the two spots allocated to the league in the WBSC eBaseball™ Series USA Finals on November 7 at the NC State Gaming and Esports Lab in Raleigh, N.C. Compass took home the other league-allocated spot by making it to the Summit Series.

“Ever since I got my draft and my team since the beginning of the year, I really thought I was going to go pretty far. I did not think I would make it all the way to the Summit Series,” JonsCopyright said in an interview following his Summit Series win Sunday night. “I’m going to take it in for right now, but I know North Carolina’s going to be pretty tough.”

It is a huge contrast from how JonsCopyright performed in last year’s league, missing the playoffs with a 9-18 record. Now, after doubling his win total, he’s quickly becoming one of the elite American players in the game, which is available for the Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 and PlayStation 4/5 consoles.

After being one of the top three players in last year’s ePremier12 USA Finals, he was one game away from reaching the Super Round of the WBSC HUGAN ePremier12 tournament, losing one of the final matches of Opening Round bracket play in Group A to eventual ePremier12 runner-up Dashu of Chinese Taipei. JonsCopyright said in an interview back in early July that experience, which he called “amazing,” was part of the reason for his improvement in the EPL this season.

“I knew I had the skill and the talent, but just making some tweaks to my hitting approach and how I play the game, how I view situations, drafting, how to approach individual players, and switching to the Pro Controller helped a lot,” JonsCopyright said. “I just wanted to get better and improve myself for more of these events so I could be there and be part of it.”

While most players play with a Pro Controller on the Nintendo Switch version of the game, JonsCopyright said he didn’t use a Pro Controller for the first time until just three weeks before last year’s USA Finals, instead using either JoyCons or the sticks on his Nintendo Switch Lite console. That, he said, made his runs in the USA Cup online tournament – in which he qualified for the USA Finals last year by placing first among American players – and last season’s Power League even more impressive.

“I knew I had to make the switch because in-person you play with the Pro Controller, so I had to make a move. It took only a month to adapt, and I've never looked back. I don't think I can hit with JoyCons again,” JonsCopyright said. “It was a huge adjustment; I went from three different types to play to who I am now.”

JonsCopyright started playing WBSC eBASEBALL™: POWER PROS at the time of its launch in February 2023, having heard about the game via a stream he watched the week of its release. However, it wasn’t the first time he had heard of the Power Pros series, having been aware of the MLB Power Pros games for the Wii and PlayStation 2 in 2007 and 2008 growing up, but never actually getting those games until after starting the WBSC game in 2023.

“I was 7 or 8 when the game came out in the USA as MLB Power Pros, and I just never got it, never rented it from Blockbuster,” JonsCopyright said. “I really wanted to get the game, but I just never did, which was kind of funny, because I always played stuff on PS2 like MLB 2K, and I was already happy with the games like that. I was also playing MLB 2003 on the PS1, and Mario Super Sluggers, so I never got to it.”

However, what appealed to him about the WBSC game were the character models, something he said attracted him to the original MLB Power Pros games, the price point of the game, and the quicker pace to games than other baseball video games.

“There's a very unique style to it. The gameplay's very good too, and I like how the gameplay is quick and fast. It's a cartoon baseball game, so it's not your realistic, MLB: The Show-type deal, but it feels different in a way,” JonsCopyright said.

It wasn’t until he heard about the Olympic eSports Series in Singapore in 2023 that JonsCopyright started getting into the more competitive side of Power Pros, joining the final non-affiliated season of the eBaseball™ Power League in late 2023, and eventually joining up with the first USA Baseball-affiliated season of the USA eBaseball™ Power League in 2024. His reasonings for getting into competitive play, he said, were to connect more with the community in America and compete against the best players in the region.

“I felt like I was a good player on LO3, and I wanted to compete against the best in the US. That also kicked in another gear of pressure, and more of the nerves came in, because, oh man, EPL is part of USA Baseball, I couldn't believe it. I wanted to be part of something special and play for the USA Finals,” JonsCopyright said.

However, he admitted he put a little too much pressure on himself, which led to the 9-18 record. In it all, though, he learned to not think too much about competing when playing competitively, but just having fun with it.

“I was definitely not having fun at first, but I realized it was not about being geared toward winning, but it's more about having fun,” JonsCopyright said. “So, I felt like I put a little too much pressure on myself instead of just playing.”

That new mindset, plus tweaking his hitting approach in both no-lock-on and Level 3 Lock-on play, helped him beat some top players en route to making it to the USA Finals and make him into the competitor he is today. Through it all, he said the league has helped him grow as a player and is looking forward to what’s to come next.

“It's never easy getting wins in EPL, with the way I drafted and improving my hitting too, it's been such a great help, and I felt like I've been breathing a lot more than I did last year,” JonsCopyright said.

Robert Tomlinson is the commissioner of the USA eBaseball™ Power League.