The AA Baseball Provincials were held in Grand Prairie July 26 to July 28 and the Barrhead 15Y AA team took home the top prize.
“It was terrifying and terrific,” said Erin Kalmbach, team manager.
“You could see it in their eyes sometimes that they're just not giving up,” said head coach Ray Rau. “They want to win. The way they listen and work hard at it, you know it can spell success.”
The final game was played July 28 with the Barrhead Orioles 15U facing the South Jasper Place Blue Jays from Edmonton.
“They had an interesting personality. There was all kinds of food and hollering, and I don't know if I was at a frat party, but it was hard to stay focused with all the noise coming from their bench,” said Rau.
“We didn't really get fazed by it, and then we started rolling early. We got up to an eight-nothing lead.”
Connor Kalmbach started pitching for the Orioles, and he pitched well, the coaches said.
The Blue Jays eventually started chipping away at the Oriole lead. The relief pitcher for the Blue Jays was brought in and he started to slow down the Orioles momentum a bit.
The score ended up at 10-10 but in the second last inning, the Orioles had the last bat, and they came up with a really big rally.
They scored five runs, bringing the score to 15-10, and now all the Orioles needed was three outs for gold.
The Edmonton Blue Jays started getting louder and yelling more and the pressure was on.
Matthew Li was brought in to pitch for the Orioles. Li stood up under the pressure and kept on throwing strikes, getting two outs.
The Blue Jays clean-up hitter was up and the score was 15-13 for the Orioles.
The next Blue Jays batter got a hit and all of a sudden the score was tied at 15-15.
The Orioles loaded the bases and Connor Kalmbach got a base hit into right field, bringing the final score to 16-15.
“We just did our jobs. Played the game the way it's supposed to be played and we got rewarded with a gold medal at the end of it. Overall, though, it's a special group of players,” said Rau.
The Orioles went into the weekend with 10 wins and six losses so they were a bit of an underdog team.
In the first game, played on July 26, the Orioles lost 7-6.
The second game against Grand Prairie played on July 27, the Orioles showed phenomenal team defence the pitching was great according to Rau.
The Orioles won 4-2, a tight game. On July 28, the Orioles played Drayton Valley.
Drayton Valley had beat the Orioles weeks ago and Drayton Valley were ahead early in the game on Sunday.
The Orioles just needed to find a little crack in their armour. And sure enough, the runs just started pouring in for the Orioles, and they took the lead. Brady Parsons was pitching for the Orioles and he had had an arm injury and couldn't throw for a couple weeks before the provincials. He came in and only gave up four earned runs. Some of the other runs were due to errors.
The Orioles ended up winning 18-9 in that game.
Kohen Rau also hit a home run in one of the semi-final games and then hit another one later in the weekend.
He has been hitting them all year at practices so this was a huge milestone in his career.
