The St. Albert Cardinals are turning the page on provincials as the host team for the U21 westerns.
The last chapter in a winning season for the junior AAA team started Friday against the St. James A’s of Manitoba and the Baseball Alberta champion Innisfail Merchants at Legion Memorial Park. Scores were unavailable at press time.
The five-team round-robin continues today, weather permitting, with the Cardinals playing the Regina (Sask. No. 1) Reds at 1 p.m. and the Regina (Sask. No. 2) Pirates at 7 p.m.
“We’re playing each game as if it’s the final,” head coach Jason Enright told the Gazette at Thursday’s practice.
“We’re going to be battle-tested right off the bat,” Enright added. “And you never know what Saskatchewan is going to bring and they’re bringing two teams.”
The last round-robin game is 11:30 a.m. Sunday, followed by the 2:30 p.m. final.
If a tiebreaker is needed, the final will be moved back to 5:30 p.m.
“Our team is pretty excited to host westerns. We’re going to go out there and prove we’re the best team,” said Nic Arlia, a catcher and designated hitter at provincials last weekend in Innisfail. “We have to work together and not make as many errors as we made through the whole year. We have to play clean games.”
The Cardinals are coming off two losses to Innisfail at the five-team provincials, including the 13-7 final.
“It was a good weekend, a good test. We got to the final, which we had expected, unfortunately on our endeavour to get there we had our two pitchers set up to go, which were our NCABL all-star pitchers as well, Tanner McLean-Poll and Brendan Larsen,” said Enright of the juniors on the senior AA Cardinals he coaches in the North Central Alberta Baseball League. “Unfortunately a passing in the family of Brendan made him leave and Tanner woke up with a little bit of a sore elbow so we didn’t want to push it and we went a different route.
“We came up a little bit short on the mound, but we battled hard and I’m confident this weekend that what we learned we’ll put it to good use.”
In league play, the Cardinals (16-6) and Innisfail (10-6), finished first and third, respectively, and in five games the Red Birds won three before dropping a pair at provincials to the Merchants.
“We played hard, we just started hitting really late in innings and couldn’t come back,” Arlia said.
In the final, “I think they were up 5-0 in the first innings and we couldn’t get anything going.”
Enright was encouraged the Cardinals didn’t throw in the towel.
“The one great thing about our team was we never got down. We were down quite a bit early in the final and they had a junior player who also plays for the (senior AAA St. Albert) Tigers, Ty Wagar going. We knew he was a good pitcher, but we knew we could get to him and we ended putting up three in the fifth, three in the sixth to get back to 11-7 so we made a game and then they got a couple late but it was good to see our guys not give up and battle to the end. I kept hearing the bench saying let’s use this as motivation for westerns.
“We know we can compete with the teams that are coming and getting Halen (Knoll) back on our pitching staff and adding one more pitcher to our roster I think we’ll be good.”
There was no pitch count at provincials but it's in place for westerns.
“It’s something new this year with junior AAA at westerns and I truly believe that it will work in our benefit. We do have a full roster of 18 players and a good three-quarters can give us innings if we need so I think that will work for us. Looking at some of the rosters of the other teams they’re a little lighter in numbers,” said Enright, noting there was no pitch count at last year’s westerns in Brandon. “We seen some ridiculous high pitch counts.
"It's part of my nature knowing the pitch count and we’ve always internally kind of abided by it so it will work well for us and I think some of the other coaches that are not expecting it we’ll see how they get through the weekend.”
The Slave Lake Heat represented Alberta in Brandon and Enright helped coach the team. A handful of Cardinals, including Arlia, were added to the roster as pick-ups.
“It was pretty competitive. The pitching was really good. Teams were well-trained and really competitive. It was just good ball,” said Arlia, 20, the 2016 Baseball Alberta Midget AA Player of the Year Award recipient with the Tier I provincial champion and U18 western gold-medal winning Cardinals.
