They were literally out of their league, but that didn’t stop the St. Albert Midget AAA Cardinals from mixing it up with AAA men’s teams last weekend.
The Cardinals were the second local team playing in the St. Albert Tigers’ annual tournament July 10 to 12, and for the second year in a row they bested their senior counterparts.
At 2 p.m. on Sunday, right before the final match neither of the two teams would play in, the Cardinals took to the field against the Tigers and came away with a 10-4 win. They opened last year’s tournament with a win against the Tigers, as well.
“Coming into a senior tournament, you don’t expect to beat these teams,” Cardinals coach Cam Houston said. “Coming out and going 2-2 against men, that’s a big deal for these guys and it’s going to help us roll into the final end of our season.”
Nine of the Cardinals’ 10 runs came together in the top of the second inning, which saw most of the Cardinals’ lineup get hits or walks from Tigers’ pitcher Taylor Wiebe and quickly run up the score.
The Tigers didn’t back off, however, battling back in the third inning to put three runs on the board and keeping up the pressure for the rest of the match, holding the Cardinals to just one more run in the sixth.
Houston said coming away from the tournament having posted such a strong record against the more experienced teams at the tournament bodes well for the remainder of their season, but they still have plenty of work to do if they want a shot at the playoffs.
“Provincials are July 31, so we’ve got three weeks here,” he said. “We’re coming into a stretch where we play nine games in eight days, and we need (to win) most of them to clinch a playoff spot.”
For Tigers coach Brad Wolansky, the tournament results were understandably disappointing. Throughout the weekend, the team was plagued with injuries and absences, and by the time Sunday afternoon rolled around there wasn’t much left in the tank.
“We were really short on people; we did what we could with it and the guys played their best, but when you’re short bodies – starting players – it’s hard to compete,” he said.
There were plenty of success stories over the weekend, though, with the first game of the tournament on Friday night seeing the Tigers come from a 4-1 deficit in the sixth inning to beat the Parkland White Sox by a formidable 9-4 margin after seven.
All told, Wolansky said he was pleased with how the tournament went – although the high-20 C temperatures combined with thick forest-fire smoke in the air didn’t help much – and emphasized the whole thing came together in no small part because of the many volunteers who step in to ensure things run smoothly.
