The Prince Albert U15 Aces are headed to Westerns after a strong weekend at provincials in Prince Albert.
The Aces finished second in the Green Pool with a record of 3-1 and rallied from a quarterfinal loss to punch their ticket to Westerns.
Aces head coach Curtis Bradbury says he was proud with how the team handled adversity throughout the weekend.
“We started off in that quarterfinal game against the Regina Lazers, didn’t go our way after eight innings, but the resiliency we showed to battle back in the top of the seventh to tie the game, hold them, and then we battled in the eighth inning. We had talked about being resilient. We were resilient in that game and that we needed to be resilient to go up against East Central to capture a berth in the Western Canadian Championships, and the girls just came out hot. We just kept rolling into this game against Twin City, which really meant nothing, so we got some girls who didn’t play a lot of innings throughout the weekend into this game, and to beat Twin City 10-5 is just a good finish to the weekend as a whole.”
Prince Albert started the weekend with a pair of wins on Friday over the Saskatoon Raiders and Southeast Sun Devils.
Saturday saw the Aces defeat the Regina Royals Comets 19-12 before falling 5-3 to the White Butte Storm 5-3 in their final round robin game.
The Aces were matched up in a quarter final against the Regina Lazers and they would rally to score three runs in the top half of the seventh.
After a leadoff double and single gave Regina runners on second and third with none out, pitcher Avie Kovitch would strike out two batters to help escape the jam for Prince Albert.
After failing to score in the top half of the eighth, Regina would score in the bottom half of the inning to dash the Aces dream of taking home the provincial gold.
The bats came alive for the Aces in their next game, as they scored early and often and never looked back in a 19-4 win over the East Central Wolverines.
Bradbury says there was no nervousness for the Aces in the batters box all weekend long.
“There was confidence, everyone was relaxed and just put good swings on the ball. There was no watching anything that was over the middle of the plate, the girls were swinging the bat and that’s important when it comes to this game rather than watching third strikes. They just battled and we hit holes.”
In their final game of the weekend, the Aces were tied 5-5 with the Twin City Angels. Prince Albert exploded for five runs in the bottom of the sixth inning, highlighted by an inside-the-park home run off the bat of Layah Mitchell.
Regardless of the result of the game, Prince Albert was guaranteed a berth in Westerns due to the fact that the Regina Lazers opted out of attending Nationals or Westerns if they qualified.
Bradbury says he was proud of the way the Aces handled the challenge of playing three games in one day and qualifying for Westerns.
“As a coaching staff we’ve had this group, their whole Aces career essentially and it’s to see them develop and be able to get to that Canadian level now on that national stage is going to be exciting.”
“It’s quite a challenge obviously and I talked about it before the tournament but we have three 13 girls which I think is important so we’re able to get girls in. Pitchers did a fantastic job. I’m most proud of our catchers in that situation. Pitching is a tough job but the catchers with all their gear on to battle through the way they did through the heat.”
The Aces will travel to the Battlefords for Westerns which take place from August 2-5
