The Prince Albert U15 Astros have advanced to the U15 Canadian Championships but not how they expected after placing second at U15 Provincials after losing 6-2 to the Valley Blue Jays on Sunday at the Kinsmen Diamond at Prime Ministers’ Park.
The Astros led 2-0 after four innings before the Blue Jays came back in the fifth inning with four runs. The Blue Jays added another run in the top of the fifth and sixth innings to seal their win.
Throughout the final game Astros’ manager Neil Finch had a mantra of ‘win every inning’.
“That was our goal is if you can win every inning you usually have success at the end of the game and they ended up winning the fifth inning by quite a bit. And so that made the difference in the game,” Finch said.
During the fifth inning some mishandled balls led to runs for the Blue Jays.
“I don’t even know if I would call them errors or just unfortunate events like we had some things that happened that just if you want to call it ball luck, Laird had way more ball luck than we did that game and they played the better game than us as a result,” Finch said.
Finch said that the work of pitchers Willis Finch and Cohen Ball were both outstanding throughout the game.
“He threw well and then when we had we had Cohen Ball come in to help us in the last couple innings, he actually did really well,” Finch said.
MICHAEL OLEKSYN/DAILY HERALD
Jaxon Geisler of the Prince Albert U15 Astros swings a pitch during the provincial final at Kinsmen Field at Prime Ministers’ Park on Sunday afternoon.
Throughout the game and especially after trying to rally for a victory in the sixth and seventh inning, the players were vocal supporting each other.
”They are a great group of kids that do nothing but great things when they’re out on the ball diamond and they’re willing to learn and they support each other. It’s a fun team to coach,” Finch said.
The team has several weeks to prepare before going to Quebec for the National event.
“We have got three weeks until then we’ll have a couple of players that we will pick up to join us for nationals and then we’ll just try to gel as a team over the next three weeks,” Finch said.
On Sunday morning the first place Astros defeated the fourth-seeded Delisle Diamond Dogs 13-2. In the other semi-final, the Blue Jays defeated the Okanese Thunderstrikers 10-3.
The Astros opened the weekend with a 15-7 win over the Blue Jays on Friday morning.
On Friday evening they defeated the Rosebud Royals 14-5. On Saturday, the Astros defeated the Okanese Thunderstrikers 12-0 in the morning and the Delisle Diamond Dogs 17-1 in their evening contest to conclude round robin play.
The Thunderstrikers claimed the bronze medal with a 15-7 win over Delisle on Sunday afternoon.
Finch was pleased to see way the weekend turned out with 17 girls and six boys’ teams in Prince Albert for Provincials.
“We brought 23 teams into Prince Albert this weekend and at Prime Minister’s Park all four diamonds were busy all weekend on a very hot weekend. It’s a showcase of what we do as a community yet again, and we bring these teams in. We welcomed them and we put on a great show,” Finch said.
The 2024 U15 Boy’s Canadian Fast Pitch Championship is in Saint-Leonard D’aston, Quebec, located near Montreal from August 14 to 18.
