The Prince Albert U17 Astros advanced to Nationals for a second consecutive year after a dominating performance at 2025 U17 Open Provincials in Laird from July 4 to July 6.
The team finished undefeated in round robin play and then defeated the Treaty 4 Okanese 7-1 in Sunday’s championship game.
Astros coach Neil Finch said the Astros’ play improved throughout the weekend.
“I think defensively all weekend we were solid. We played clean defence and made lots of really good plays out on the field,” Finch said. “We talked about making our stops and we made a lot of stops and then that way you can have some fun going to work on the bats and we did that.
“We were actually slow out of the gates. Our bats were just okay on Friday night and as the weekend went on we just got better and better and better.”
The Astros opened on Friday night with a 6-2 win over the host Laird Valley Vikings. On Saturday morning, they defeated the Saskatoon Selects 18-1 and on Saturday afternoon they defeated Treaty 4 Okanese 14-0.
In the team’s last round robin game they shut out Okanese and Finch observed that the pitching was also strong on the weekend.
“Our pitching did very well. Yes, we talked about trying to be around that 70 per cent strikes, 30 per cent balls kind of at a maximum. I thought our pitchers did a very good job of pitching lots of strikes, which means then your defence goes to work and both went well,” he explained.
Last year the U17 Astros advanced to provincials. This year’s team is made up of several members of last year’s U15 Astros who placed fourth at Nationals after finishing second at home.
“It’s interesting because anytime you get to go to a national championship, you’re excited, regardless of how you got there,” Finch said. “If you’re first or second, that’s who gets to go in this province. But going as Sask One means a lot. We’re going there to represent our entire province and the city of Prince Albert and I’m hoping that we go there and compete.”
The 2025 U17 Men’s Canadian Fast Pitch Championship is from Aug. 6 to Aug. 10 in Napanee, Ontario, Finch hopes to build off the momentum from the performance at provincials.
“We have a month just to keep improving and I think that’s what we’ve done all season,” he said. “We just keep getting better and that’s the goal, just keep getting better so that when we go there we can compete at the highest level against the best in country. That’s still the goal there. I don’t talk about the results or the end product, but if we keep our process of doing good things we will compete.”
The team is a mix of both last year’s U15 Provincial runners up and the U17 Provincial champions according to Finch.
“We had some U15 players move up and some U17 players that were already there, right and so on this U17 team, we’ve got four that will be returning to nationals that were on the team
last year, but we have some first years that would have been at U15 Nationals last year,” Finch said.
The return to the nationals shows the strength of the overall program, according to Finch.
“We’re excited that the Astros program continues to be strong. Then we get to represent our province at the national championship,” Finch said.
Other provincial representatives have not been determined.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
