By Nathan Kanter

Standard Hill Lakers win tier 4 provincials

Aug 14, 2017 | 2:00 PM

The final score was quite lopsided, but it nonetheless capped off what was a perfect weekend for the Standard Hill Lakers.

The senior baseball team hosted the tier four senior provincial championships at Silver Lake Regional Park, and they won, following a 13-3 thumping of the Meadow Lake Sox in the final. 

“With all the work that went into our season, that was an unreal way to finish off the year and a huge thing for our community,” Lakers third baseman Garry Pauls said. “Winning at home is awesome. Just for the community is the big thing. To show the community how good of a team we have here.

“It’s huge. The last time they won any provincials was back in 2004.”

To have on-field success is one thing, but to run a successful tournament at the same time required more than just the work of one team.

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“The weekend, we were told it was perfectly run,” Pauls said. “We had lots of volunteers that helped out and everybody on our team was great to pitch in. Fans, everybody, even other teams would help out.

“We had no issues, no hiccups. All the teams, umps, fans, sponsosrs, commented on how well it went.” 

The Lakers added two players to their North Saskatchewan River Baseball League team: Mike Ross from the Battlefords Trappers and 17-year-old Jaydon Gartner from the Northwest Prairie Pirates of the Saskatchewan Premier Baseball League.

Those moves paid off, as Gartner pitched in the 7-1 semifinal win over Arcola.

In the final, it was 18-year-old Cooper Olson, who plays for the Prairie Pirates with Gartner (and played five games for the Lakers in the NSRBL this year), that stood out. 

Olson pitched six full innings against the Sox, before Gary Stewart closed things out.

“The way our team works is defence first,” Pauls said. “Our pitchers are two young kids that throw – our main guys. They were on. That’s our game, is defence. And then our bats came alive.”   

With a total of five games in just three days, finding the right way to manage multiple arms is one of the biggest things to overcome.

“Challenges [at a tournament] would be having midget kids pitching, with pitch counts, and working the rotation,” Pauls said. “The way our team is, everybody came together.

“Everybody was involved in one way or another.”

Pauls also wanted to thank sponsors from all the nearby communities that helped, and also gave a shout out to the Kenosee Cubs, who gave a young fan in town one of their bats.

nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @NathanKanter11