Midget Beavers bring back silver from provincials

They went 3-1 in the round robin before defeating Yorkton in the semis and then falling to the North East Rangers in the final.

“To go to provincials and win four of six games, I think is outstanding,” Benoit said. “I think the kids all year kept a positive outlook on baseball and continued to apply the learnings that they had all year to the next game.

“The team gelled very well all year and supported one another and they had fun doing it and that’s the most important.”

To win four of six games at provincials is a solid accomplishment in and of itself, but given the circumstances the team faced, it’s even more impressive.

The Beavers had to play four games in one day, in 34 degree weather, with no wind.

Not only that, but it was the final day of the tournament, this past Sunday, where results matter the most.

“We had an hour and a half break from [7 a.m.] until we finished the last game, in the heat,” Benoit said of the team’s Sunday schedule, that saw them play games at 8 a.m., noon, 2:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. “I give the kids a lot of credit because they went out there and they did their best, they tried their best, they kept a positive attitude.”

Their opponent in the finals, the Rangers, didn’t have a 12 p.m. game that day, and their semifinal also ended much earlier than the Beavers, who had a roller coaster of a game against Yorkton that ended in a 12-10 win.

“Our semifinal game, it was a tough game. It was up and down,” Benoit said. “They’d get two, we’d get two and we managed to stay ahead. We were known at the tournament as the come back team and we were always digging deeper and deeper.

“We had a half hour between our semifinal game and our final game, where we played four games all day and our competitor in the final game had played three games all day.”

The result was a lopsided 20-4 score in the final for the Rangers, but Benoit pointed out a couple reasons why the result shouldn’t detract from what was clearly a positive weekend.

“The North East Rangers, they’re all 18-year-old kids. And our team, we had somewhere around eight or nine 15-year-old kids, a couple 16-year-old kids and maybe one 17-year-old,” Benoit said. “If you look at that alone, never mind the difference between three games and four games, never mind the difference between we had a half hour break from our previous game and they had over an hour, our kids did very well.

“Yeah, we got spanked the last game, but the attitude of the kids, under heat exhaustion, was still positive.”

What that means is the future is clearly bright for the midget Beavers.

“If this team can stick together for years to come, they’ll be winning some provincial championships not in tier III, but maybe tier I,” Benoit said.

He also added how thankful he is to the players, and parents for all their hard work in the 2017 baseball season.

“I really want to thank the players and congratulate them on a tremendous finish for their 2017 ball season,” Benoit said. “A huge thanks to the parents of course for the support that they gave all year, not only to the players and especially to the players, but for all their contributions and of course to the coaching staff.”

nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @NathanKanter11

by Nathan Kanter

Midget Beavers bring back silver from provincials

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