The Southeast A’s bantam AAA baseball team fell 4-2 to the Regina Pacers in the Regina Baseball league final on Thursday, but the club’s season is far from over.
Trent Dorrance, head coach of the Alameda-based A’s, said eight members of the team have been on the field since Monday playing for Team South East at the Estevan 2016 Saskatchewan Summer Games. Three days after the Games baseball tournament is over these players will join the rest of their usual teammates to compete in the Baseball Saskatchewan provincial bantam AAA championships at Regina Columbus Field from July 30 to Aug. 1.
Dorrance said the club will come up against three clubs from Regina, including the Pacers, at the provincial championships along with three teams from Saskatoon and another from Warman. He said all eight teams make up the top bantam AAA clubs in the province, so the competition is going to be tough.
“You have to be top two in your pool of four to go on to the semifinals and that’s my goal,” said Dorrance. “If we can do that, who knows. The top team goes on to nationals in Prince Edward Island and the second- and third-place teams go on to westerns in St. Albert, Alberta. So my goal is to get to one of those three spots.”
After finishing first in the Regina Baseball league with a record of 13-5-2, the A’s earned a first-round bye in the league playoffs. The team drew the Lumsden Cubs (8-12) in the second round where they notched an 11-1 win at Alameda Field to advance to the final against the Pacers (10-7-2) at Regina's Lions Park the next evening.
“There was good pitching from both sides,” said Dorrance, noting A’s pitchers Dylan Hull and Dawson Schaff shared the duties on the mound against the Pacers. “They squeezed home a couple of runs towards the end and we had a couple of untimely errors, gave up two other runs, but it was very close. It was a good game right up to the end. In the bottom of the last inning we almost tied it up. Tyren Dorrance hit the top of the fence in dead centre with a runner on base so we just about tied it up, but neither run scored in the end.”
Dorrance said finishing second in the Regina Baseball league is a huge success for the sophomore Southeast A’s baseball club. He said the goal coming into this year was to finish top three in the league and it’s a tip of the cap to the boys for surpassing that.
Having a number of the players participate in the Summer Games will keep the core fresh heading into provincials, noted Dorrance, while also enabling them to check out some of the opposition players they’ll be facing. He said as long as the kids stay healthy and energized coming out of the Games they’ll be ready for provincials.
“It’s a big explosion right now with everything getting jammed into the end of July and the first part of August,” he said. “Hopefully we’re still playing in August with westerns and nationals, but we’ll see.”
