The peewee AAA St. Albert Cardinals came up just short of advancing to westerns.
At the provincial championship tournament in Spruce Grove, the Cardinals lost their semifinal 9-5 to SEEBA. A win would have guaranteed them a berth at westerns in Brandon, Man. Instead, the Spruce Grove White Sox and SEEBA will represent Alberta.
It was a disappointing outcome for the Cardinals who finished second in the regular season standings out of seven teams with a 12-5 record.
"It wasn't a surprise that SEEBA was there [in the final], but it was definitely a surprise that Spruce Grove was there and good for them," said St. Albert coach Darren Mazur. "They deserve it. They won the games. It was rewarding for them too, because they put on a really, really good tournament."
SEEBA finished the year with a 13-2 record. Spruce Grove was 6-8.
The semifinal was the second game of the day for the Cardinals, and they got off to a strong start with three runs in the first inning by playing small ball.
"Not so much with hits, but we were aggressive on the basepaths," Mazur said. "They walked a couple guys. We stole some bases, passed balls, a couple hits, but then it settled down and it was a tight game until about the sixth inning."
Around the sixth inning, SEEBA came on and scored five runs to take the lead. What made it worse for the Cardinals is the fact it was because of their own mistakes.
"We kind of gave it to them with a couple of errors in the field," Mazur said. "We probably had about four or five unearned runs that game, which is kind of disappointing because our kids have been pretty sound defensively all year."
In the seventh and final inning the Cardinals were in the midst of a comeback and had narrowed the gap to 9-5 when Cam Mazur came to the plate with two teammates on base. He hit a ball to deep left-field that would have been out of the park and cut the SEEBA lead to one run if the outfielder wasn't able to leap up and rob him of a home run.
"At the end of the day, the kids were disappointed and we're disappointed but what can you do?" said coach Mazur.
En route to the semifinal, the Cardinals opened the tournament with a 12-9 victory over the host team before losing 9-8 to Fort McMurray, who finished the regular season 4-10.
"They had picked up a player from Bonnyville who pitched for them and shut us down, pretty much," said coach Mazur. "That ended up putting us into a tiebreaker on Sunday morning at 8 a.m., again against Fort McMurray. We ended up winning that game [by eight runs]."
Looking back, Mazur said the loss to Fort McMurray was a big one because if they had won, there would be no tiebreaker game and the Cardinals would have played the Red Deer Braves in the semifinals, a team they had no problems with this season.
Next year Brendan Guy will be the only player returning to the peewee AAA team. Coach Mazur said the peewee AA team was almost exclusively first-year players, so many of them should be playing for the AAA squad next season.
Bantam provincials
In Okotoks last weekend, the bantam AAA Cardinals went 2-2 in the round robin and failed to make the playoffs because Okotoks Black and Sherwood Park qualified with 3-1 records.
Jay Florkevich threw a complete game in St. Albert's first victory, 14-5 over Okotoks Red. He also went 5-for-5 at the plate. Carson Bokenfohr belted a pair of two-run home runs over the left field fence, in addition to an RBI single.
In the second game against Red Deer, St. Albert won 8-2 with pitcher Ryan Anderson dominating on the mound. In a complete-game effort, he struck out nine and allowed just one earned run on four hits.
St. Albert came up short in the last two games, including a squeaker against Sherwood Park, after a 14-4 loss to Okotoks Black. Against Sherwood Park, St. Albert led 6-0 after six innings. Sherwood Park tied the game with six runs before taking the lead, thanks to a walk, two stolen bases and an infield hit.
