The bantam AAA Cardinals played two doubleheaders on the weekend, winning two of their four games.
On Saturday the third-place Cards the faced the top-ranked Okotoks Dawgs Black team at home and couldn’t find a win. The first game saw St. Albert fall 12-3 to the Dawgs.
Head coach Dave Maguire says Okotoks Black threw the ball very well, leaving Peter Corrigan and Anthony Owen the only players to solve the Okotoks pitching.
“It’s a good baseball team and we just couldn’t hit, just couldn’t get anything going,” Maguire says.
Despite a big loss in the first game, the team was able to refocus for their second matchup against Okotoks, this time losing 7-3.
“For the second game of the day after not being that successful after the first game, I give these kids a lot of credit because they’re real battlers and they came back in the second game and played well.” Maguire says. “I think that there were a couple of instances where we had runners on base and if we could have gotten a key hit here and there I think we could have won that game.”
Sunday was a much better scoring day for St. Albert. In their first contest, the Cardinals pulled off a significant 13-3 win against the Sherwood Park Athletics. It was the team’s first victory against the A’s this season.
Maguire says the Cards found lots of gaps in the outfield against Sherwood Park. The other factor contributing to the win was Jeremy Gamracy who threw a four-hitter and allowed only one run in five innings.
“We’ve really worked a lot with him on trying to get some consistency going and he admitted after the game that he’s finally sort of figured out that he doesn’t have to throw the ball through the catcher; that a little bit less velocity and a little bit more control can go a long way,” says Maguire. “And he certainly demonstrated it. He kept the Sherwood Park batters completely off-balance the whole game.”
In their final competition on Sunday, St. Albert racked-up a 14-6 win against the Okotoks Dawgs Red team. The Cardinals pounded out 15 hits, including four triples (two by Ross Suprunuik). Okotoks Red has yet to score a victory against the Cardinals this season.
St. Albert will play a makeup game against Sherwood Park tonight at 7 p.m. at Legion Park before heading to a tournament in Saskatoon this weekend.
