The St. Albert Cardinals have the luxury of home-field advantage as the No. 1 seed at the Baseball Alberta bantam AAA Tier I championship this weekend at Legion Memorial Park.
“It’s pretty exciting coming in being able to play on our home diamond. It feels good here,” said shortstop Mike Brisson during Monday’s practice. “We maintain this field quite a bit so it’s pretty nice that we have provincials here.”
The Cardinals have played their best baseball of the season on their Field of Dreams.
“We’re comfortable here. Obviously we really like our facilities. We have one of the best facilities around at this level. It gives the guys a chance to kind of do what we do out here every day and be in the rhythm and be in the flow,” said head coach Sean Erickson. “We’ve got home support as well, which is always great, and hopefully the weather holds up for us.”
The eight-team draw starts 9 a.m. Friday and if there are no tiebreakers Sunday’s semifinals are 9 a.m. and noon and the final is 3 p.m.
The winner advances to the Baseball Canada U15 championship, Aug 25 to 29 in Summerside, P.E.I. and the runner-up advances to westerns, Aug. 12 to 14 in Spruce Grove.
“It’s been a fun season. It’s coming to the end here but we’re just hoping on our home turf that we can keep the season going and go to either nationals or westerns and try and do something there,” Brisson said. “We’re really going to have to battle and work as a team to grind out some wins and win Tier I.”
In pool A, the Cardinals play Okotoks Dawgs Red at 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday’s games are at noon against the Fort McMurray Oil Giants and 6 p.m. against Okotoks Dawgs Black.
Pool B consists of the Parkland Twins, Calgary Bandits, Red Deer Braves and South Jasper Place Jays.
Four pool B games are on tap Saturday in Spruce Grove.
Visit www.baseballalberta.com or the Cardinals’ team website at www.stalbertbaseball.com for the schedule and results.
The provincial qualifying round ended with the Cardinals on top at 21-6, followed by Parkland (21-9), Calgary (20-9), Dawgs Black (19-4), Dawgs Red (12-12), Red Deer (12-15), South Jasper Place (10-14) and Fort McMurray (9-10) as the top eight finishers in the 11-team playdowns.
“There has really been three teams at the top all year – ourselves, the Calgary Bandits and Okotoks Black,” Erickson said. “They’ve taken it to us a couple of times but we got both of them pretty good too.”
The Cardinals, 25-8 overall in the Baseball Alberta league, roll into provincials at the top of their game.
“We’ve really been coming together the last couple of weeks,” said Erickson, the former assistant coach of the midget AAA Cardinals who took over the dugout duties when longtime bantam AAA coach, Dave Maguire, moved to the west coast.
“With our hitting, we had a little bit of a lull in the middle of the season but we’ve really been swinging the last couple of weeks,” Erickson added. “Our pitching has carried us all year and if it just keeps doing what it’s doing we’re going to be set up in a really good spot. Our depth arms have been really good the last couple of weeks too. We’ve been giving them a chance to pitch a little bit more, giving our main starters a little bit of a break, and they haven’t really slowed down as far as what we’ve done on the field so that's a good sign going forward.”
Brisson also likes how the Cardinals look on the eve of provincials.
“We’re playing pretty good actually. Our last stretch of the season that we’ve played it’s been our toughest part of the schedule and I think we’ve handled it quite well. We’ve come together as a team very good as well,” said the Grade 10 St. Albert Catholic High School student.
Brisson, 14, is among five returnees from the 2015 bantam AAA Tier II provincial champions that went 33-19 overall.
“This year we’re coming in as one of the top teams so I think it will be fun to come in with a target on our back and being able to defend it on our home turf,” he said. “We’ve spent a lot of time hitting and working on all aspects of the game and a lot of team stuff too. We’re buying into the team feeling because not one player is going to win you provincials. You’ve got to work as a whole team.”
