The St. Albert Tigers’ last game of the season had to be pushed back Friday.
The Tigers (5-5) were supposed to take on the Fort Saskatchewan Athletics (10-5) at Legion Memorial Ball Park in the third straight meeting between the two teams, but the game was rained out. The game was rescheduled for Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at Legion park.
The rescheduled game may have to be made up again after a small fire was set at the mosquito diamond on Friday, next to the senior diamond where the Tigers play. On Monday, all of the diamonds at Legion park were closed to play.
The Tigers started the season without getting a win in any of their first three games, but on Wednesday and Thursday last week, the Tigers beat the Athletics two straight days, 8-4 and 5-4, two make-up games after previous rain-outs.
The Athletics are the defending senior AAA national champions and will return to the national championships in August in Dartmouth, N.S. Quebec pulled out of the tournament so Baseball Canada invited back last year’s national champions to defend their title. In addition to the Athletics, the Red Deer Riggers will travel to nationals as last year’s provincial champions.
Catcher Brad Wolansky was filling in for coach Kurtus Millar in the two wins and said he was pleased with how things went against Fort Saskatchewan.
“They went awesome,” he said. “They went really well. We had excellent pitching and, you know, I called a pretty good game.”
Craig Tomas and Darren Adams were the starting pitchers in the two wins.
Millar said it’s always nice to beat a team as good as the Athletics and it’ll be important to earn that last win of the regular season against them.
“Especially this year, because there’s only five teams in the league, right, and four of them are strong — Calgary being the weakest,” he said. “The momentum, for every game, is important.”
Millar said a tournament in Kamloops, B.C., on the weekend of July 11 might have been a turnaround for his team, in terms of confidence and attitude.
“Last week, their intensity level was 10 times what it was during the regular season,” he said. “They’re enjoying it again. They’re having fun again. If you’re down on yourself and you’re not having fun, there’s no way you’re going to succeed.”
In Kamloops, the Tigers just missed a semifinals berth, but showed signs of some very strong play.
Just after arriving in Kamloops, St. Albert lost 8-1 to Everett, Wash. Next up, the Tigers squared off against the Seattle Studs, a semi-professional team, and had Athletics pick-up Kyle Vertz start the game for them on the mound.
“He had them down 6-5 and they hit five doubles in the last inning to win 10-6, but it was a great game,” Millar said. “After the game, I told them ‘Do not hang your head after that one.’ That would be like us beating the (New York) Yankees.”
After that, they beat the Riggers 5-0 and had to beat Kamloops to move on, but lost 1-0.
This year’s senior AAA Alberta provincials will be hosted at Legion park beginning Aug. 4. The winner will advance to next year’s national championship tournament being held in Quebec. Millar said the last three hosts of the provincial tournament have gone on to win the tournament.
