Dave Leaderhouse
Special to the Herald
The Prince Albert Aces needed to do something to keep the door open during round-robin action at the Softball Saskatchewan U15 girl’s provincial championships being held at Max Power Ball Park in Prime Ministers’ Park on Friday.
They not only kept it open they smashed it down as a 17-1 triumph over the Yorkton Crush evened their record at 1-1 and has them in the hunt for a playoff berth with two more preliminary games to go.
“This gives us a lot of momentum,” says Aces’ coach Curtis Bradbury. “I told the girls at the start of the day if we can win two out of the three games then we should be in good shape.”
The day didn’t start out as planned as the Aces were on the wrong end of a 14-2 setback at the hands of the Saskatoon Selects Surge, but even with the lopsided score Bradbury saw the team turning a corner.
“The game didn’t go that well, but we didn’t play a terrible game either,” noted Bradbury. “In the last inning we got our bats going.”
In that opening match against the Surge, the Aces were down 14-0 when Harper Hovdebo cranked a towering two-run home run to give the team some confidence and that obviously carried over to the afternoon tilt against Yorkton as Prince Albert scored six runs in the first inning and then added seven more in the second before cruising to the lopsided decision.
“We got off to a good start,” understated Bradbury. “By going up early it let Berkley (starting pitcher Bell) settle in.”
Bell finished the game by holding Yorkton to just one hit and she also aided her cause by hitting a two-run triple in the first inning and then added another run-scoring single in the second. Emily Semenchuk and Hovdebo each added two-run doubles while the big blast was a three-run homer by Devyn Bergen in the second that ultimately put the game out of reach.
The Aces continued their quest for a provincial title with another preliminary game on Friday as they were to face the Regina Royals Reign in a late start. The final score was not available by press time. Their final round-robin game is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Saturday when they will take on the East Central Wolverines.
There are 14 teams divided into three pools entered in the championship with the top two clubs in each pool after preliminary play moving on to the playoff round. The provincial champion will be determined in the gold-medal game at 3 p.m. on Sunday with the winner moving on to the national championships in Fredericton, NB, later this month.
The U15 girls is not the only title to be determined this weekend as the U15 boy’s are also taking to the field beginning on Saturday morning.
Where the girls have a large base of players the boys have just three teams in the U15 age class in the entire province. The Prince Albert Astros will try and better teams from Wadena (Rosebud) and Shellbrook (Parkland) when round-robin play gets underway at 10 a.m. on Saturday at the Rotary Field in Max Power Ball Park.
The top two teams after the round-robin will meet in the championship game at 2 p.m. on Sunday with both of those squads qualifying for the Canadian championships scheduled for Surrey, B.C., next month.
