The St. Albert Cardinals continue the tradition of excellence in midget AA baseball with another winning season.
The U18 Western Canada medallists as the 2016 champions and 2015 runner-ups are 12-0 in league play with one round to go before next month’s provincials and 21-5 overall entering this weekend’s tournament in Medicine Hat.
“We have high expectations,” said head coach Jason Enright, the architect of back-to-back Tier 1 provincial championships while going 50-6-1 last year and 46-9 two years ago. “Our expectations are to uphold what we’ve done in the past, get into Tier 1 and play on that final Sunday and see what happens.
“We’re trending towards that way.”
The Cardinals are beating teams with a roster of 12 newcomers and four returning players.
“The compete factor that we have I would say is actually higher than in years past because we’re a younger team so we have to compete every inning and every pitch,” Enright said. “We’ve had a lot more close games than in years past where we’ve had a much older senior team and we kind of started strong and rolled over some teams. We’ve had a handful of comebacks in the last inning or two and actually three of our last four wins have been in the last two innings so it shows our resilience as a team. They’re a young group and they don’t give up. They battle until the last out and that’s worked well for us.”
Enright is pleasantly surprised how the season has unfolded.
“It’s a little bit above our expectations to be honest with 12 new players to the team, so we weren’t sure what we we’re getting into. They’re all talented ball players so finding a way to get them to mould together and mesh has been fun. It’s also exciting seeing some guys that we didn’t know what we were going to get at this level really step up and play so it’s been great,” the 2016 recipient of the Baseball Alberta Ted Rudge Coach of the Year Award, presented annually to a minor coach who directed his/her team with sportsmanship.
“They’re not playing like first years which has allowed us to really show how good our program is overall,” Enright added. “I know there have been some teams, especially in the south, that have looked at our record and kind of expect we’re the same team as last year so for these guys to fill those shoes that those players left behind has been great to see.”
Jake Enright, a third baseman last year who moved behind the plate to help mentor the team’s pitching staff, is joined by Nick Arlia, the 2016 Baseball Alberta midget AA player of the year, Logan Buchanan and Landon Christoffel from last year’s Cardinals.
“At the start of the year we were a little bit concerned that we were going to have a drop off but then looking at the group of guys coming through early on we could tell that we were going to be contenders again so I wouldn’t say we’re surprised how well we’re doing but it’s definitely a step up from where we thought we would be at the start of the season,” said Enright, an over-age player along with Arlia and both will be ineligible for westerns next month in Kamloops if the Cardinals three-peat at provincials.
“Some of our young guys are fitting in very well and have really taken over some of the spots that we’ve lost guys from last year so we really haven’t taken a huge step down but it’s definitely a different team for sure.”
Three Alberta titles in a row would be unprecedented at the midget AA level.
“To be straight-up honest it would’ve been easy for me to kind of move on with my graduating class but I took it upon myself to challenge myself as a coach to see how well I could do with a new set of players so the expectations I’ve put on them they know are derived from the past success we’ve had, knowing that was a separate team itself and this is kind of a new group,” said coach Enright. “We’ve had a target on our back from day one and the players have deflected all of it and played well.”
The third round will consist basically of the top four teams in both the north and south Tier 1 divisions, consisting of 18 teams overall, to form a province-wide Tier 1 division in preparation for the championship tournament.
“We beat all the teams that we feel are the stronger teams in our tier right now without having seen some of the teams in the south so it will be a good crossover this last round to really see where we’re at,” said coach Enright.
The Cardinals will also fly to Kelowna this month to play in the Valley of Champions tournament in the midget AAA division after winning midget AA honours last year.
“They’ve abandoned the AA bracket that they had just due to lack of teams,” said coach Enright. “It’s going to be a good test for us. We kind of planned our season that way to get into some higher level competitions to get kind of provincial tournament-ready prior to our own provincials as well.”
The Cardinals will work on their hitting while the pitching and defence has been in fine form.
“We’re playing a lot of closer games but our pitching and D is really keeping us in there,” said Enright, the receiver for the team’s deep rotation of nine pitchers. “We don’t have quite as much power pitching as we’ve had in the past but they’re hitting their spots a lot and what they’re doing is working so we have to keep it going.”
As long as the competitive juices keep flowing, the Cardinals will be in the thick of things when it matters the most.
(“Our coach) is great at keeping us motivated and knowing that we all can do a little bit better in every game. He gets that fire going within ourselves so a lot of credit is due to him,” said Enright, 18. “But we’ve also got a lot of competitive guys on this team and we have great competitive spirit so that keeps us going as well.”
