The Prince Albert U18AA Royals couldn’t pick up their first home win of the season over the weekend dropping a pair of games to the Regina Buffaloes in SPBLAA action at Andy Zwack Field.
“Both of these games kind of boil down to two hitting with runners in scoring position.” says Royals head coach Scott Gladstone. “We left a lot of runners on base, and we just couldn’t come up with that big hit. They had a few innings where they scored a lot of runs. Basically, they came up with the big hits when they needed them.”
Regina would open the scoring in the first game with three runs in the top half of the third inning off a passed ball, a wild pitch and an RBI double by Carter Wolensky.
Regina would add another single run in the top half of the fifth inning to take a 4-0 lead.
The Royals would rally for three runs of their own in the bottom half of the fifth inning as Dylan Kripp would cash in a pair with a two RBI triple down the left field line.
The next batter, Lynden Simpson would drive home Kripp with a single to right field on the next pitch.
Regina would answer with two in the top half of the sixth with a run scoring on an error and an RBI single by Carter Miller.
The Royals would chip in to the three-run deficit in the bottom of the sixth as Kayden Burns would drive home Carter Gladstone with an infield single.
Two batters later, Simpson would triple on a line drive in the gap to bring home Dylan Kripp and Burns to tie the score at 6-6 after six innings of play.
Regina would explode for six runs of their own in the top of the seventh inning to take the first game of the doubleheader by a 12-6 score.
Lynden Simpson started on the mound for Prince Albert allowing four runs, three earned scattering four hits and four walks across four and a third innings punching out seven.
Regina would score early and often in the second game of the doubleheader posting five runs in the first inning and posting seven runs in the fourth on route to a 13-7 victory.
Kolby Brown started for the Royals and earned the loss on the mound, allowing 10 earned runs on 10 hits, walking four batters and striking out two over three and a third innings pitched.
Gladstone says he was happy with the way his pitching staff performed, despite the results on the box score.
“I thought our pitching was fantastic. We have a lot of work to do on defense. Few too many balls in the air that are dropping and communication issues. Those are things that we’ll get to work out in practice. We had our practice canceled on Tuesday because of the smoke, so we really only had one outdoor practice so far.”
Logan Edwards had a pair of hits and drove in a pair of runs for the Royals in the loss.
The Royals return to action on Wednesday night when they travel to Saskatoon to take on the Saskatoon A’s at 6:30 p.m.
