Every team, including the St. Albert Cardinals, is a contender for provincial honours at the peewee AAA Tier I championship at Legion Memorial Park.
The top five teams in the Baseball Alberta standings are separated by only four wins, with the Camrose Cougars (24-9) and Okotoks Dawgs (24-7) leading the pack and the Cardinals (20-10) are fifth overall.
"Every team has beat everyone so going into this weekend it's anyone's tournament to win. We kind of joke teams can go 4-0 or 0-4 so it's that competitive with the top five teams. It will be a good battle," said head coach Ashley Roy of Cardinals at Wednesday's upbeat practice.
"It's kind of thrilling to host provincials. You get to show off to your own home crowd how you can do and it gives a big advantage to you against other teams," added Logan Kowaluk, 13.
Friday the Cardinals played the Sherwood Park A's (22-9) and Red Deer Braves (20-11) but the scores were unavailable at press time.
Today's game against Okotoks starts at 3 p.m. and the round-robin ends Sunday at noon for the Cardinals against the Camrose Cougars (24-9).
If there are no tiebreakers, the third-place game is 3 p.m. and the final is 6 p.m.
The winner advances to the U13 Baseball Canada championship, Aug. 24 to 27 at Repentigny, Quebec, and the second and third place teams qualify for westerns, Aug. 17 to 21 at Spruce Grove.
Visit www.baseballalberta.com or www.stalbertbaseball.com for provincial updates.
The last St. Albert peewee AAA team to win provincials was the 2014 Cardinals.
"It's definitely a goal of this team to play after this weekend, whether that be nationals in Quebec or in westerns," Roy said. "The one thing we've stressed with this team is to be level headed and have a workmanlike attitude going into ball games. We try to keep it not too high and not too low. We try and keep it at even keel for the players. We don't want this group to get overly excited about anything because when you do that you're too anxious and it leads to errors and mistakes."
A level playing field at provincials bodes well for the Cardinals after posting a winning record in league play.
"Those games, win or lose, always depends on who's pitching. If we lost a game, we might not have had our top pitcher up against that team so it's going to be very interesting to see what pitching matchups go up against each other this weekend. Each team might have one or two really top end guys and the rest are good pitchers but there is definitely a difference between them and obviously in four games you can't pitch your top pitcher all the time (because of pitch counts)."
If needed, the Cardinals have 12 pitchers Roy can deploy at provincials.
"We have a lot of depth at pitching so I like our chances," Roy said. "We need some guys to give us some good outings. Carter (Roy), Jack (Hudson) and Logan are going to be the guys we rely on to give us four, five innings with their 85 pitches."
The Cardinals kicked off league play with eight consecutive victories and were winners of three in a row entering provincials.
"We've been a consistent throughout," Roy said. "Going into the season you have to be in the top five (to qualify for provincials) so I wanted to make sure this team had a good start and make sure we're up there. Now we're making sure we're getting all the pitchers their reps and getting game like for everybody and just not relying on your top two or three pitchers.
"The second half everyone has been contributing throughout the games, whether it be pitching, hitting or in the field."
The Cardinals stood tall at 24-12 overall before the tournament.
"We've done pretty well but we've had our ups and downs," said Kowaluk, a dependable righty with the versatility to play any position. "When we're all working together really well the game usually works out in our favour."
At the plate the Cardinals are tearing the cover off the ball.
"We're a strong hitting team which helps us stay in the game," said Kowaluk, a Grade 8 student at Vincent J. Maloney School. "We're always hitting well and consistently."
The Cardinals averaged 12.4 runs in 30 league games.
"We're up there with the league leaders in how many runs we scored so it's a testament to their abilities as hitters," Roy said. "Top to bottom we've been able to put the ball in play and lots of different players have come through at key moments to really step up for us."
