Skip to content

St. Albert Cardinals take flight

The 11U AA baseball season gets underway at Legion Ballpark.
1606 cardinals new ph CC
Brayden Pliakiwiski slides into home plate to score a run in a game against the Parkland Twins on Saturday. PRESTON HODGKINSON/St. Albert Gazette

The boys of summer are officially back in St. Albert. The 11U AA Cardinals opened up league play at Legion Memorial ballpark this past weekend playing their first proper games in two years. The sun was shining and the early morning air was crisp as the Cardinals prepared for a game against the Parkland Twins on Saturday. Coach Colin Bergstrom was all smiles in the moments before the game.

“We played in 2019 but didn’t play in 2020 because of COVID. We just had a return-to-train program and that was it, so no actual organized games against other teams,” said Bergstrom. “It feels awesome, glad to get the kids playing again, it's been too long.”

With that, the game was underway. It was a fantastic defensive start for the Cardinals. Pitcher Chayse Courtorielle struck out the first three batters he saw for a perfect first inning. St. Albert capitalized in the bottom of the first inning with a few stolen runs and an RBI from Roman Patterson to give the Cards a quick 3-0 lead.

Parkland cut into the lead with two runs of their own in the second, but the Cardinals locked things down as the game went on. The offence came in back-to-back innings for St. Albert. The bottom of the fourth saw the Cardinals with a slim 4-3 lead, but some smart base running scored them two more runs to make it 6-3, which was supplemented by some base hits by Kaleb Gervais and Brayden Poliakiwiski to extend the lead to 8-3.

Their biggest inning came in the fifth on the back of an inside-the-park home-run by Courtorielle, who scored two runs and put the score out of reach at 13-4 for St. Albert. Parkland made a last-ditch comeback effort in the bottom of the sixth but could only muster two runs to make the final score 13-6. A win for the Cardinals on opening day.

Courtorielle had a magnificent game, with three strikeouts and a home run.

“I felt pretty good for the first game of the year and the first in two years,” said Courtoriellle.

With Game One out of the way, the Cardinals had to look toward Sunday. They had two games on the docket, one against the Leduc Black Gold 47s in the morning and a rematch with Parkland in the afternoon.

There wasn’t much to write about for their first game against Leduc. They played a hard game but the Black Golds shut them out en route to a 10-0 loss. Sometimes the game of baseball can be a cruel mistress. They would have to look forward to their rematch against Parkland.

This was perhaps the most exciting game of the weekend. It was a crazy back-and-forth affair that saw Parkland get the jump on the Cardinals this time around. A seven-run 4th inning by Parkland gave them a commanding 8-2 lead more than halfway through the game, but the Cardinals didn’t give up. They clapped back with three runs in the bottom of the fourth to narrow things to 8-5.

Parkland got some insurance with one run in the fifth to make it 9-5, but St. Albert kept pushing. Eventually we got to the bottom of the sixth with a 9-8 score but some good pitching by Parkland closed things out. A lot of effort in the comeback, but they came up just short. They finished the weekend with one win and two losses.

The Cardinals showed a lot of fight over the weekend. They fought through nerves and rust to get a respectable record to start their season. Colby Bergstrom and Kobe Jenkins, known as "Meat and Cheese" by their teammates, gave some of their thoughts after the close loss.

“It was good, the first game was better than the other two, for sure,” said Bergstrom.

“Yeah I was nervous with the two out and the last batter was up,” said Jenkins. “I wanna work on pitching because I wanna be more accurate while throwing harder.”

For coach Bergstrom the games couldn’t have gone better. Despite the losses he saw a lot of good things and will continue to work with the team to improve this summer.

“It was just so awesome to get back out on the field, get some games in after a full pandemic year ... really happy the kids are excited to play and we couldn’t ask for better weather playing here on our home diamond,” said Bergstrom. “There was lots of hustle, our pitching was pretty good, and our bats were decent, so they were all pretty good.”

The 11U AA St. Albert Cardinals will try to get their record back to .500 this Thursday as they head to Aileen Faller Park in Leduc for a rematch with the 11U AA Black Gold 47s

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks