A Softball World Series Is Being Played in Odessa Right Now, and Two West Pasco Teams Are In It

A national youth softball championship is being played in Odessa this week. The Dixie Softball World Series opened Saturday at Starkey Ranch District Park and runs through Tuesday, July 28, with dozens of teams from 10 states on the fields at 11880 Lake Blanche Drive, and two West Pasco teams competing in front of their own neighbors. It is the first time the West Pasco Girls Fast-Pitch Softball Association has hosted the event since the 1980s.

Both hometown teams got here the hard way. West Pasco won the Florida Dixie state title in the Belles division, beating Belleview, and took the Debs state championship with a win over Springhill.

Team	How they qualified
Belles (13-15)	Beat Belleview for the Florida state title
Debs (16-19)	Beat Springhill for the Florida state title

The last game of a 15-year friendship

For two of the Debs, this is the end of the line. Pitcher Kiley Collins and catcher Kyanna Olampo have played together for about 15 years, a battery pair for at least a decade of it, and both age out of the league after this tournament. Collins described the World Series to local media outlets as the equivalent of the College World Series for girls who have given most of their childhood to this league. Olampo said the team has sisters on the field who are not related by blood.

Olampo's road to Tuesday is longer than most. She was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at age 3. She lost her hair, her eyebrows, her eyelashes. After two and a half years of chemotherapy she was back on a softball field at 6, essentially as soon as treatment ended.

Collins said she did not learn her teammate was a cancer survivor until she was 13 or 14, because Olampo never let it show.

If you want to go watch

Starkey Ranch District Park is the county complex off Lake Blanche Drive in Odessa, the same fields West Pasco uses for its regular season. Parking and the fields are the ones families already know from fall ball. Games run through Tuesday, with the final rounds at the end.

Specific game times, bracket updates, and gate details were not included in the reports reviewed for this story. The league and the Florida Dixie Softball organization are the reliable places to check before you drive out, since brackets in a double-elimination event shift as teams win and lose. The state organization posts its championship information at fldixiesoftball.com.

A word of practical advice for anyone heading over: late July in Pasco means afternoon heat and a decent chance of a storm cell rolling through around game time. Bring water, bring a chair, and expect delays.

What it means for the league

Hosting is a real logistical lift for a volunteer association: field prep, umpires, hotels, and hundreds of visiting families from 10 states, all in four days in the middle of a Florida summer. West Pasco is not done, either. Florida Dixie Softball has awarded the league the 2027 state tournament, which brings another multi-day event back to the Odessa complex next year.

For Collins and Olampo, though, the calendar ends Tuesday. Whatever happens in the final rounds, it is the last time the two of them take the same field in West Pasco uniforms after 15 years of doing it.

Keep up with Pasco County news at pascocommunity.com, follow us on Facebook, and join the conversation in our Community Forum if you make it out to Starkey Ranch this week. For more coverage like this, read our latest sports stories and community news.