The Border City Blue Jays from Lloydminster won their first game and, more importantly, their last game at senior AA tier II provincials held last weekend at Lynn Prime Park.
Along the way they defeated some of the best the Saskota Baseball League had to offer, including the host Estevan Tap House Wolves.
The Wolves, who won the Saskota Baseball League’s Harbourne Cup for the second year in a row recently, lost 11-1 Friday to open their experience at provincials.
“We came out and we still had a lot of fun,” said Jolan Lingenbach, Wolves’ catcher. “We had some tough games. We ran into a really good pitcher on Friday night on the defending champs. From there, we knew coming into Saturday we’d have to win one if not both of those games. We had some tough innings in that first game Saturday but we also had some good innings…
“Baseball’s that kind of game where anything can happen and all of a sudden you can get six runs in an inning on a couple of hits and a couple of errors.”
The Wolves lost 10-6 to the Yorkton Yankees in the early game Satruday and then closed out their tournament with a 12-7 win over the Kindersley Stallions that night. Neither the Wolves nor the Stallions made the playoff round Sunday.
“We were very close (to making the playoffs),” said Lingenbach. “It’s a little bit disappointing seeing those Saskota league teams go on. We know we’re there. We know we’ve beaten them and they’ve beaten us. We know we can compete at this level. It’s good to see those other teams there and we hope to be there too.”
The experience of hosting was a positive one of the Wolves.
“As soon as we sent out a request for sponsors, we got donations piling in from all sorts of different things,” Lingenbach said. “Signage, media, all that stuff came in with numerous kinds of support. It really couldn’t have happened without them.”
He said it’s so much fun to host something like this they can’t wait to do it again.
Carlyle Cardinals player/coach Mason Crossman’s team lost 14-4 in the final to the Blue Jays but the team still had an enjoyable tournament.
“I thought we played well and we had a lot of young guys who got us through the heat,” Crossman said. “We just played better and better every game.”
The Cardinals defeated the Yankees 17-3 to make it to the final, while the Blue Jays defeated the Oxbow Chiefs 7-2, the third Saskota team in the semis. Carlyle
“Whether it was Estevan, Oxbow or ourselves, we knew either one of those teams had a chance to win this weekend,” Crossman said. “Saskota’s a good league. It’s gotten more competitive the last couple of years. Because we’re playing a lot better games it’s why we can compete like we do.”
One of the players that did well for the Cardinals in their blowout semi against the Yankees was Josh Hohn.
“He had eight or nine RBI in that game,” Crossman said. “He played great (Sunday) morning. Everybody was playing well. Those guys were on so he could drive them in.”
Carlyle went 2-1 in the round robin, defeating Kindersley 11-7 and Border City 5-4 before losing 5-4 to Yorkton in that round.
Oxbow went 3-0 in that roun, defeating Yorkton 15-9 and Kindersley 8-7 and Border City 11-4.
