The St. Albert Falcons went down swinging as the youngest team at the U16A Western Canadian Softball Championships.
The U14 Falcons, with three U16 pickups on the 11-player roster for westerns, finished the six-team boys’ draw winless in five games against older and bigger teams last weekend at Meadowview Diamonds.
“We just didn’t have the advantage of how hard you can hit the ball, how far you can throw the ball and how fast you could run. We were just smaller,” said Ethan Reiter, 13, after Sunday’s 15-0 mercy-rule loss to 100 Mile N Hour (BC #1) of 100 Mile House in the Falcons’ last round-robin game.
There was no U16 Alberta team for westerns so the Falcons filled the void as the host/provincial entry.
“We had a good experience. Most of our team is 13 and we had two 12-year-olds and our pickups were 16 (two pitched and one caught),” explained Rick Reiter, coach of the Falcons. “For the most part the kids knew we were coming into this overmatched and I’m very proud of how well they kept their composure. I had no kids complaining about sitting and kids would play wherever I needed them. It was very positive.”
The Falcons were out-scored 71-6 overall and were shutout in the last two games.
“Two of our games we got to full innings and the other three were called after three or four innings due to runs. There were a lot of innings we had two outs and just couldn’t make that play to get the third out and then there were some runs after the fact,” said coach Reiter. “On the most part the kids were upbeat and positive all the time. It was a very successful tournament for them.”
The closest game was the 13-3 loss against the 2-4 Pimicikamak (MB #2) Thunder of Cross Lake on Friday.
“The kids were catching up to the pitching, we made more plays and had more bats on the balls,” said coach Reiter.
The Shellbrook (Sask.) Rangers (5-3) were crowned western champions after knocking off 100 Mile N Hour (6-1) in Monday’s final by a score of 7-5.
The Fleetwood (BC #2) Marlins (4-3) of Surrey were awarded bronze.
“It was really competitive. There was a lot of good teams here and it was a good experience to see how good other teams are and how good you have to be to beat them,” said Reiter, an infielder. “It was a pretty cool tournament. We had some good weather. It was a good weekend.”
“It was even better than I thought it would be,” added coach Reiter of the calibre of competition. “The pitching here was incredible. Each team had four, five, six pitchers. The fielding was amazing and with the bats we had guys bombing it to the fence, which is 275 (feet). It was very impressive.”
The Falcons were coming off a season playing against U16 boys’ and girls’ teams before westerns.
“We did pretty good. We didn’t really have a league. We beat some of them and we had good games against most of them,” said Reiter, a Grade 8 Richard S. Fowler School student.
