The Southeast A’s bantam AAA baseball team starts Baseball Regina league playoff action tonight with a second-round tilt at Alameda Field against either the Regina Buffalos or the Swift Current Indians.
The A’s earned a first-round bye thanks to finishing the regular season with a 13-5-2 record, which was good for first place in the league. The Buffalos (8-10-3) and Indians (7-12-2) vied for the second-round berth in Regina this past Tuesday.
“We’re at the top of our game right now,” said Trent Dorrance, head coach of the A’s. We’ve had “time to practise this week and we feel confident against whoever we’ll play in league playoffs and continue from there. If we do well there we’ll have full momentum going into provincials.”
The winner of the second-round matchup will go on to play in the league championship game this Tuesday. As the first seed, if Alameda makes it to the final they will enjoy home field advantage. The Baseball Saskatchewan provincial championships follow in two weeks with a July 30 to Aug. 1 competition in Regina.
The A’s played their last regular season game on July 3 when they earned a spilt in a doubleheader against the Indians at Swift Current. However, they were able to experience some game action this past weekend in a Melville Baseball tournament where the team went 2-1 before the competition was rained out.
Dorrance said they’ve kept game ready over that break by engaging in a very competitive practice structure where the kids were put in game-type situations such as having to pitch against each other and focus on what they need to be doing for the next play. He said heading into this season their goal was to finish in the top three, so they’ve exceeded their expectations so far and just need to keep that up.
“I knew they had the ability to do it,” he said. “To really prove where they are now they just have to follow through and do well in league playoffs and provincial playoffs.”
