Canucks End Provincial Tournament Run With A Win
The Moose Jaw 15U A Canucks won’t be advancing to a medal game in the Tier Six provincial tournament but they end it with a big bang.
The Canucks lost 13 - 8 to the Sask Five Giants in their Saturday AM game but on Saturday evening the defeated the Saskatoon Cardinal Onyx 17 - 7 in a sixth inning mercy rule walk off.
The victory left the Canucks with a 1 - 2 record in Pool B of the round robin tournament; not enough to advance to a medal game on Sunday.
The evening game featured a strong hitting Canucks squad who aggressively stole base after base. The Canucks were caught only twice in a good 12 attempts to steal bases.
The aggressive base running and a strong double got stretched out into an inside the park home run for the Canucks.
A strike against a Canucks’ batter in the bottom of the first inning - MJ Independent photo
“The one win we had it was pretty good but it was overshadowed by poor effort,” Canucks assistant coach Derek McNabb told MJ Independent.
The lack of effort was something he felt dogged the Canucks throughout the weekend although there were players who put in strong efforts.
“One guy we had out there that gave all effort throughout the weekend was Chad Milne our starting pitcher the other day was Chad Milne he was great everyday,” McNabb said.
A Saskatoon runner made it to third base - MJ Independent photo
The seeming lack of effort was also experienced at the Saskatoon bench as the coaches could be overheard trying to encourage their players to play harder. Players mentioned the heat - the temperature at the time was 32C.
Asked about the radical change in offensive strategy with base runners regularly green lighted to steal bases he said it’s what the strategy had been all weekend.
“We’re trying to be aggressive with the bats and the base running…it’s what we were trying to do all weekend. The entire weekend we wanted to be aggressive and the boys finally had it sink in.”
Winding up for the pitch - MJ Independent photo
Asked about the final result McNabb said “it was nice to get up there finally. There was a learning experience for us. We’ve still got two a couple of games rained out for our playoffs from a couple of weeks ago so hopefully the boys learnt something from it,” he said.
He said despite high hopes of doing well in the weekend’s tournament the team will continue to move forward to finish off the season on a positive note.
