Reds bring home more hardware
Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter
After being named the Provincial Champions the Reds bantam boys baseball team were off to Westerns in Manitoba this past weekend, Aug. 16 to 19.
“We made it to the gold medal game and we played an all-star team from B.C. We took them to extra innings and we ended up losing in nine innings 6-5, so we ended up with a silver medal,” said coach Daren Kennett.
The first game was against team Saskatchewan whom the boys beat 7-1. In the second game they lost to B.C. 10-1, followed by another victory, this time against Manitoba 9-5. After a few more games they once again faced B.C. only this time for the gold medal.
“We got down five nothing early in the game and the boys just kept battling and battling and battling and we had some opportunities to definitely win the game,” said Kennett.
“We got to the end of seven innings, regulation play and we were tied so we played an extra inning and were still tied and so we ended up having to go two extra innings. It was a whale of a game and we ended up losing 6-5 in the bottom of the ninth.”
The boys proved over and over this year they were a force to be reckoned with. The season went well with 13 boys on the team, four of them first year bantam players and nine second year ones.
“The boys practiced hard and their baseball skills improved significantly throughout the whole season. Then it all got kind of highlighted with the provincial championship, and basically what ended up winning it for us is we had really good hitting,” said coach Daren Kennett.
Kennett said the final weekend of the official season is the one that stands out the most to him. He said the first game was against Acme and they were beaten 9-0.
“So everyone was kind of down on the game, down on themselves, and our first year boys, we had four first year boys, they piped up and said, ‘hey guys let’s not worry about it. Last year we lost the first game of the provincial championships and we went on to win.’ So they ended up winning the peewee championships last year after losing the first game,” said Kennett.
“One thing that really impressed me was their resilience, they were able to just say yeah it’s a tough loss, you know you always want to win the first game of your tournament but they didn’t dwell on that.”
The boys worked really hard all season and he thinks it was great that they kept battling and walked away with a provincial win. Making new friends at Westerns and enjoying the experience were his hopes for the team, winning a medal is an added bonus. The season is now over for this team but Kennett said fall ball will be starting in the beginning of September.