Last year’s bantam AAA provincial finalists have a score to settle.
The St. Albert Cardinals return to Okotoks for another shot at the championship after losing the Baseball Alberta Tier I final to the host Dawgs Black.
“It would feel real good to go there and win it. That’s something we want to do as a team,” centrefielder Chase Visser said.
Okotoks has represented Alberta at the U15 nationals twice in the past three years and five times since 2010, while the Cardinals were the provincial reps in 2016 with a come-from-behind 8-6 decision over Dawgs Black in the final.
“It always seems to be Okotoks, and I would have to say the same thing this year with the hometown crowd and they’re the defending champions,” said Visser, a returning Cardinal along with Marc Brisson and Carson Ironside from the 12-3 provincial setback.
In the Baseball Alberta standings, Okotoks is 24-5 in league play and 19-4 in the provincial round.
The Red Deer Braves top the charts at 33-9 overall, while going 20-6 in the provincial playdowns.
The Cardinals split the season match-ups with both teams.
Calgary Cubs Blue is another top contender at 27-3 overall and 20-3 in the run-up to provincials.
“We’ve played them a few times already and they’ve been pretty close games,” said middle infielder Logan Kowaluk of losses of 7-2 and 8-6 to Cubs Blue. “Hopefully we can beat them at provincials.”
The latest Baseball Alberta stats list the Cardinals at 22-14, including a provincial mark of 15-11.
“There were a few teams we wanted to win against that we didn't get a win against, but we’ve won a lot of our games,” said Visser, 14.
“We’ve been doing pretty good,” Kowaluk added. ”We’re not the top team in our tier but a lot of teams we’ve faced have been pitching their best against us so we’ve had to work harder.
“It’s great to know that we’re a good enough team to go to provincials. We made it to the best of the best and hopefully we can go to nationals (Aug. 23 to 26 at Oshawa).”
The provincial runner-up qualifies for westerns, Aug. 16 to 19 at Winkler, Man.
Leading up to provincials, the Cardinals ratcheted up the practice sessions in addition to scheduling extra exhibition games.
“Right now we’re focusing a lot on having strong hitting and good base running and defence and pitching. We’re trying to work on getting better defensively, which wins you games,” said Kowaluk, a Grade 9 Vincent J. Maloney student who competed at the U13 westerns last year with the peewee AAA Cardinals, third-place finishers at Tier I provincials.
Kowaluk, 14, recently competed at the Alberta Summer Games with the Zone 5 (Black Gold/Yellowhead) silver medallists with Visser, Ironside and Everet Stewart of the Cardinals.
Visser, a Grade 10 Barrhead student, sees similarities between the current Cardinals and last year's Red Birds but in different ways.
“Last year, we were very confident with our bats and we knew we could do it and this year pitching is the exact same thing. It’s like we’ve got great pitching and we know that we can win it with our pitching and our hitting is close behind,” said Visser, a lefty in the team’s rotation. “We can throw almost anyone out there and they can give us a chance at winning the game and last year we could put anyone at the plate and they would be hitting.”
Last winter, Visser was a forward and Ironside was a netminder for the St. Albert Gregg Distributors Sabres, the bantam AAA provincial finalists.
