They are the best in the west.
The Muenster Pee Wee Red Sox won gold at the AA Minor Baseball Westerns in Morden, Manitoba August 16-20.
"They played really well," said coach Chad Hofmann of his team the day after they claimed their Western win.
Their first game of the tournament was against Manitoba, played August 17. There were some tense moments when the Red Sox were down 6-1 at one point, but they came back to score an 8-7 win over the Manitoba team.
"As it turned out, that was the big game of the tournament," Hofmann said, as this win ended up putting them in the final.
Their second game, played the afternoon of August 17, was against the British Columbia team.
Though the Red Sox played pretty well throughout the game, B.C. was able to score five runs in one inning - something the Muenster squad couldn't get back.
"They were good," Hofmann said of their opponents. "It was tough to come back."
In the end, the Red Sox lost that game 7-4.
In their first game on Saturday, they played Alberta, and beat that team 12-3.
"We got up on them early," Hofmann said. "And we hit the ball really well."
Their bats were flying in their next game as well, though their defence didn't seem to be as tight.
In that game against the host team from Morden, the Red Sox won by a score of 24-14.
"I know, it's a football score," Hofmann laughed.
The Red Sox recorded five home runs in that win, and had some errors, he admitted.
But the win gave them a 3-1 record, putting them in second place in the round robin and pitting them against the British Columbia team in the gold medal game.
That final, played August 19, was a tense game.
"It was 0-0 going into the fifth inning," Hofmann reported.
Then B.C. scored a run at the bottom of the fifth.
The Red Sox got a run in the sixth to tie the game at one, then at the top of the seventh, scored two more to make it a 3-1 game.
They managed to hold off the B.C. team until the end of the game to claim the Western championship.
"It was a little stressful, but pretty exciting," Hofmann said.
Overall the team played great ball over the weekend, Hofmann noted.
"Everyone played really well.... Everyone contributed," he said.
Their pitching was stellar, he indicated, with Brody Frerichs at the top of that heap.
"He's our best," Hofmann said, and he pitched the final.
Because of Frerichs and the good pitcher for B.C. - "the best guy we've faced all year," is how Hofmann described him - the game went really quickly.
"We were just a little bit better," Hofmann stated.
