Barrhead peewee Orioles won a silver medal at the peewee AA Tier Two provincial baseball championships in Red Deer, Alberta August 1-3.
The Orioles soared through the round robin with a 3-1 record only to suffer a tough 9-2 loss in the gold medal game against Innisfail. Orioles head coach Doug Hanlan explained what went wrong during the championship final.
“It started out really well. We got out of the first relatively quick and easy so it was a great start. We made a couple of errors in the second inning and after three innings we were down 3-1. We were still battling but around the fifth inning we fell apart defensively. We lost our composure a little bit. We started letting in some runs in the fifth and sixth innings and we couldn’t get any momentum at all,” said Hanlan.
Hanlan thought the Orioles lost the game for a number of reasons.
“It was a combination of two things to be honest. We faced a good pitcher but we also beat ourselves. That was the best pitcher we saw all weekend but it was nothing we hadn’t seen before so we should have been able to hit that kid. We had some mental mistakes that we couldn’t recover from,” he said.
Hanlan went on to discuss the emotional roller coaster after his team lost the game.
“I will tell you, I have never been a part of something like that where we lost the game and they came off the field and there were about five or six kids with tears coming down their faces,” he said. “The emotion was unbelievable. It was really tough to watch. There were a lot of tears while the kids were getting their silver medals because that is how bad they wanted to win.”
The Orioles opened the tournament with a dominating 16-6 victory over Innisfail, mercying them in the sixth inning.
“The team played unbelievably well. We had really good pitching, extremely good defence and timely hitting. Everybody hit the ball very well. It was awesome,” said Hanlan. “It was really good to start the tournament with that type of statement game. Going in, there were two teams we really wanted to beat. Innisfail was one and Red Deer was the other. We really went after them and it paid off.”
The Orioles were even stronger in game two of the tournament as they beat Leduc by a final score of 20-10. Hanlan said they won that game, once again, because of “timely hitting.” Hanlan addressed his team’s strong hitting performance.
“We spent the week leading up to provincials working on our hitting. We spent two hours a night focusing on nothing but hitting. We worked on our timing and it came together during those opening two games of the tournament,” he added.
Barrhead played their toughest game when they battled Red Deer on Saturday, August 2.
“If we won that game, we knew we would be in perfect shape. If we won that game, we would have finished in first place and we beat them 7-6. We were actually losing in the sixth inning by a score of 6-5. We came up with a pinch hitter in the top of the sixth and he knocked in the winning run. We held them in the bottom of the sixth and seventh to seal the victory and secure first place,” Hanlan said. “It was an incredible game full of back and forth action. It was probably our best game of the year. The boys were unbelievable and people in the stands were saying that was the game of the tournament.”
Hanlan discussed his team’s ability to bounce back and hold it together in what was one of the most important games of the tournament.
“It was so intense and the kids were really focused. The focus is what got them through and there were no mental errors. The kids went nuts after getting the final out. That was the one game that we really needed to win,” he said.
With first place wrapped up, the Orioles lost their final round robin game when they were defeated 17-9 by South Jasper Place.
“If we got into the position where this game didn’t mean a lot we were going to start some of our bench players. We had a couple of kids who hadn’t played that much so we decided to give them the full game experience. It didn’t matter what the outcome was so we sat four of our best players. It was close up until the fourth inning and then we kind of lost focus,” he said.
Hanlan shared his thoughts on the team’s dominating round robin performance.
“I couldn’t have been happier. We played two really tough teams and mercied them both. Then, in our third game, which we knew was going to be tough, we came out on top of that one too. We set ourselves up perfectly so we could play the other kids (in the final round robin game) and that was our goal entering the tournament,” said Hanlan.
Even with the championship final loss, Hanlan said he was “very proud” of his team’s performance throughout the entire tournament and the season.
“I am so proud of the kids and everything they accomplished this season. I gave every single kid a hug while they were getting their medals. It was an unbelievable experience for me personally, and it feels like I have 12 more sons and one more daughter,” Hanlan said. “I would say the season was a huge success because of the way we came from tier three last year to play in tier two this year and then to play in the gold medal game. We played a full tier ahead of last year with the same group of kids. That really is an amazing achievement and we had a great season.”
This was Hanlan’s first year coaching baseball and said, “It was a truly amazing experience.”
“The relationships I made with every kid were so important. It was so great to watch them grow and get better and better all year long. We don’t get paid for this, but it is all worthwhile when you see a kid get a big hit at the right time and see the huge smile on their face afterwards. When you see one kid succeed, it is all worth it at that moment,” he said. “It was an amazing experience for the kids and an amazing and very rewarding experience for me.”
