The bantam AAA St. Albert Cardinals continued to roll through their competition with two road wins this week.
Their pitching was strong in the first game but not so good in the second, but in both St. Albert scored enough runs to win the game. They opened the week with a 10-3 win over the SEEBA Cardinals in Edmonton on Wednesday and followed that up with a narrow 11-10 win, visiting the Sherwood Park Gold A's squad the next day.
The wins run the Cardinals' record to an outstanding 11-2 in the provincial round of the Baseball Alberta schedule.
"They've all raised their level of play, some a little bit more than others," said coach Dave Maguire. "To me, the thing I like is that they work as a team, they get along as a team and they support each other and that's going to be successful for us."
Cam Vilscak, a second-year player for the Cardinals, got the start against SEEBA and effectively dominated the opposition batters. He threw just 88 pitches in a seven-inning complete game win. He gave up just five hits, three earned runs, hit one batter, had two balks and didn't walk anyone.
"I'll bet you it was about 70 per cent strikes," Maguire said. "That's a great pitching performance. This team has been our nemesis this year and we set out to focus and play them the way that I thought we were capable of playing. Our defence was very, very good, on top of that."
In fact, the Cardinals defence didn't commit a single error. The only mistake came on the bases when Carson Bokenfohr was picked off at third. However, it didn't cost them as the team's offence was seeing the ball very well from starter Mason French, as well as reliever Janil Doshi, who took to the mound in the top of the fourth inning.
Going into their game against SEEBA, St. Albert had eight days between games and practiced only twice. Bokenfohr said it was good to start off the final month of the regular season with a win, especially considering the quality of their competition.
"It's great, especially against SEEBA, because they're going to be one of our biggest competitors in the provincials, so it's big to get a win here," said the first-baseman, adding Edmonton and Red Deer are usually the two toughest teams St. Albert goes up against.
St. Albert got off to a quick start against Edmonton, putting up five runs in the first inning alone, not even recording an out until the sixth batter had come to the plate. Leadoff hitter Jay Florkevich reached on a single and he came around to score on a Tanner Karpinski RBI single. Vilscak helped out his own cause with a run-scoring triple and Layne Viveiros replicated his pitcher to make the score 3-0. The fourth run was scored on a fielder's choice and the visitors went up 5-0 thanks to an RBI double from Bokenfohr.
In the second of back-to-back road games, in Sherwood Park, St. Albert again jumped out to a big lead, going up 6-0 by the time the A's came to bat in the second inning. However, because Cardinals' pitcher Ryan Anderson was struggling to find his control, Sherwood Park was able to fight their way back and tie things up at nine apiece. Through four innings, Anderson had allowed five runs on seven hits. Sean Poulin came in to pitch the final three innings and recorded the win. In the top of the seventh, tied 9-9, Karpinski, who had three hits in the game, started the two-run St. Albert rally with a one-out base hit. After, Florkevich and Mat Brisson had reached safety to load the bases, Viveiros knocked in two runs with a single.
As any team would hope, while getting close to the end of the season, Bokenfohr said he thinks his team is nearing their peak in terms of level of play.
"We're getting there, but we can do a lot more, I think, as a team, offensively and defensively," the 15-year-old said. "We're stepping up in big situations, but I think we can do a lot better and achieve a lot more."
St. Albert has no more tournaments remaining on its schedule before provincials. Their last non-league game was a rematch against Sherwood Park Gold on Friday at Legion Memorial Ball Park. The score was not available at press time. The Cardinals have 10 more games in the regular season between July 11 and 25.
The Baseball Alberta provincial championship tournament is July 30 to Aug. 1 in Okotoks. The winner of the tournament will advance to the national championships in Vaughn, Ont., while the second place team will compete in the western Canadian championships in Sherwood Park.
Peewee Cardinals
The St. Albert Cardinals won gold at the Kamloops Sussex Peewee AAA Invitational Tournament last weekend, going through the tournament with a 5-0 record.
St. Albert met the Kamloops River Dogs in the final after the hosts beat the Spruce Grove White Sox. In the round robin, St. Albert beat Kamloops 20-7, but in the final, they had to fight for a tight 5-2 victory. The Cardinals only managed seven hits in the win, but strong defence and pitching carried the team to victory. Alex Marthiensen had a strong performance on the mound for the champions striking out four over three innings. Cam Mazur came in to close things out. He pitched the final four innings, allowing just one hit, no runs and striking out seven.
The Cardinals are back in action Sunday with a doubleheader in Lloydminster.
