The Westlock Wild’s bid for the championship title ended in the semifinals of the Pee Wee ‘A’ Tier 1 Provincial Championships in Trochu July 21-23.
The Wild were first in their pool before heading to the Sunday morning semifinal versus the Drumheller Stingers.
The Wild fought hard throughout, but came up a run short, losing 14-13.
“Basically they had two good pitchers that came on and the guys were getting used to them,” said head coach Ron Chamzuk.
“They were getting used to the hitting and then we had a couple errors just to go down a couple runs.
“We battled back for the last inning and came up short.”
Coming into provincials undefeated in the weekend qualifiers, the Wild started the weekend on a high, stomping the North Peace Black Sox 16-9 Friday night.
In Saturday’s noon game, the St. Paul Storm edged the Wild 9-7.
Though they were battered, the Wild weren’t defeated and recovered in Saturday night’s game against the Mayerthorpe Mets.
The Wild put on a hitting clinic and rolled to a 17-7 victory over the Mets to move on to the final four to face Drumheller.
“When we went down south there were a few stronger teams — they picked up a few extra players along the way whereas we just kept our house league and took it down like that,” Chamzuk said.
“We actually turned out really good against a few of the teams, but there were two that were really competitive towards us and that’s where we ended up losing one run in the semifinals.”
This was the first time the team has gone to provincials so it was a new experience for them and a bit of preparation for next season.
“Bunting and back catching were amazing this weekend,” he added.
“I had other coaches come up to me and comment how tremendous our bunting was executed, and from another coach that was a pretty big deal.”
