The Southeast Legacy midget AAA Twins may have finished short of a finals berth in a strong Medicine Hat URC baseball tournament last weekend, but their coach believes the experience gained playing against those top clubs will help them later in the season.
The Twins lost 10-4 to the Medicine Hat Mavericks in the semi-final last Sunday in the July 3 to 5 tournament at Athletic Park. The loss followed a 12-1 victory over the Edmonton Cardinals, a 12-3 win over the Lethbridge Senior Giants and a 5-3 loss to the Calgary Redbirds during the first two days of pool-play.
Twins coach Blaine Kovach said the Medicine Hat tournament included some very good and also some very young teams among its eight-team roster. He said the Twins showed they were one of the more competitive clubs despite the 2-2 record.
“The very first game we batted around, we had some good pitching, we just couldn’t score the runs that we needed to and later on in the game that would have helped us out,” said Kovach. “In the final game our bats were alive in the first inning and it just went cold after that. We played well during the weekend. We didn’t make very many errors, which is a very good thing going into provincials at the end of the month and with six games left in the season our pitchers got a lot of confidence this (past) weekend. They pitched very well.”
Kovach said the main importance of the Medicine Hat tournament is it helps the players relax, have fun and polish some aspects of the game knowing it doesn’t count against league, where the Twins sit at 11-12, and provincial standings. He said the bats are going strong and the pitchers are hitting the strike zone right now, but more work is still needed at limiting their errors heading into the final stretch.
“We’ve put up battles and we’ve won games against each of the teams we have coming up and so if we can get six wins, which would be perfect, we’d jump up in the standings a bit,” he said. “Even splitting it, going 3-3, I’d imagine we’d go up a couple or stay exactly as we are and as of right now sitting in the middle of the pack is just fine with me.”
