It wasn’t the start that the Prince Albert U18 Royals were looking for at the U18 AA Tier 1 provincials in Regina.
The Royals dropped their first game of the tournament to the Regina Blue Jays 5-3 on Friday afternoon. It was their only game of the day.
Head coach Troy Semenchuk says he felt his team deserved a better fate in the outcome.
“To sum it up, I’d say they stole one from us. Our pitchers were outstanding. Owen Tolley-Procyk started and then Danny Acorn came in relief. The defense was solid all night. The bottom line is we left the bases loaded twice and we left runners on second and third twice. You strand 10 runners, you probably deserve to lose a game. Two to three parts of our game were really good, the bats just didn’t come alive unfortunately. We felt we kind of let them off the hook.”
During the regular season, the Royals finished fifth in the Saskatchewan Premier Baseball League (SPBL) standings while the Blue Jays finished in first place.
The Royals are scheduled for a pair of games on Saturday against the Sask 5 Giants (4th place) at 9 a.m. and the Regina Wolfpack (8th place) at 3 p.m.
Despite each team being ranked coming into the weekend, Semenchuk says an upset or two isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
“It was good. I think it’s frustrating for the guys knowing that we should have beat them, that we were in a good spot that way. This is the first time I’ve been to a provincials where honestly, the seedings one through eight, I don’t know that they mean a whole lot. There’s so much parity in the league. You look at the scores every night and it seems like lots of doubleheaders are split and that everyone is beating everyone. It’s a really even tournament and it’s just great baseball.”
In other U18 AA provincial action, the Padres were in Moose Jaw for Tier II provincials. Results from their 5 p.m. game against the host Moose Jaw Canucks were not available as of press time. The Padres take on the Regina White Sox at 11:30 a.m. and the White Butte Broncos at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday.
