The squirt St. Albert Select Angels took home the provincial title from Red Deer on Sunday.
The 11- and 12-year-old softball stars went 6-0 through the three-day tournament, including a 9-3 win over the hosts in the final.
“It was awesome,” said coach Lisa Fedoriw. “We were defending a title this year. We won it last year and we came back and it was a really good tournament.”
The tightest game of the tournament for St. Albert was in the semifinals, which they won in an 11-10 nail-biter.
Lloydminster was up 2-1 early and St. Albert tied things up in the second. In the third, St. Albert went up 4-3 before Lloydminster came back and scored five runs in the fifth to go up 8-4. However, when Angels batter Elizabeth Kirk came up to the plate with two teammates on base, she knocked the ball straight over the fence for a three-run home run. That made the score 8-7 for Lloydminster but tipped the momentum in St. Albert’s favour.
“We just etched away at them basically for two more innings and got three runs in the last inning to beat them 11-10,”Fedoriw said.
Besides Kirk, Fedoriw said the whole team was strong on offence all tournament.
“All our girls’ bats really came this weekend,” she said. “They were truly impressive out there. They were doing some amazing stuff with their batting.”
That offensive output was evident in the scores of their victories. St. Albert averaged 13.2 runs over their six games. They opened with a 13-7 win over Red Deer.
“It was funny because we were winning 10-2 and they came back and got five runs,” Fedoriw said. “It got a little crazy, that one.”
Later on Friday, they beat Edmonton Dunluth 20-1. On Saturday, they concluded the round robin with a 12-1 victory over the Calgary Sliders and a 14-1 win over Calahoo. After beating Lloydminster in the semifinal, St. Albert had a 9-0 lead heading into the sixth inning of the final.
“[Red Deer] got their last three runs in the sixth,” Fedoriw said. “It was kind of scary. The girls did really, really good. I was really, really proud of them.”
Fedoriw also pointed to pitcher Kendra Potts, who pitched in every game for her team.
On their way to provincials, the Angels went 23-10-1 and many of those games were against older girls. After starting the season in a squirt league in Edmonton, they moved up to play against peewee teams that are 13 or 14 years old. They still ended up finishing second in the league.
“We were doing too well, so we basically moved up to get some competition and I think that really helped us for provincials,” Fedoriw said.
St. Albert had nine of their 13 players return from last year’s championship team and those nine will be moving up to peewee next season.
This is the end of the year for the Angels because there is no Western Canadian championship tournament until the bantam level. However, the bantam St. Albert Angels also won the provincial title and they’ll be attending westerns in Victoria at the end of the month.
