NEWS PHOTO RYAN MCCRACKEN
The Medicine Hat Junior AAA All-Stars hoist their trophy after sweeping the Airdrie AÕs in a best-of-three provincial series with a 13-2 victory on Saturday, July 20, 2019 at Kin Coulee Park. Medicine Hat advanced to nationals with the win.
rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com@MHNMcCracken
The Medicine Hat AAA All-Stars are on their way back to the national stage.
After putting themselves in the driver’s seat of their provincial series against the Airdrie A’s with Friday’s 13-5 victory, the All-Stars jumped all over the chance to secure their place at the Canadian Junior Little League Championship by sweeping the best-of-three set with a 13-2 blowout Saturday at Kin Coulee Park.
“It’s pretty exciting, we’ve got a great opportunity to go there,” said All-Stars pitcher Caleb Garrecht, who earned Saturday’s complete game victory. “I was just trying to throw strikes and my defence helped me a lot.”
After using just three pitchers in Friday’s win, the All-Stars sent Garrecht to the hill and watched as he worked his way through Airdrie’s lineup for the five-inning victory – holding the A’s to just two unearned runs on three hits and a walk while striking out one.
“He was really good,” said All-Stars catcher Jeff Bullock. “He was just pitching strikes, that’s what we needed.”
All-Stars head coach Dean Harrison says he was thrilled with the effort he got out of his arms this weekend, as well as the defence behind them – which stymied the A’s with a number of loud outs over the two games.
“Our kids all year have played some solid defence. We just told our pitchers to let them put the ball in play,” said Harrison. “Fourteen-year-olds don’t strike out a whole bunch of people from 60 feet, so put the ball in play and trust our defence – and our defence was really good. Our outfielders played really good today, played good position and were able to make the catches that would have been blooping in front of us. I love our defence.”
While defence has been Medicine Hat’s bread and butter this season, the bats also came through in both of their lopsided victories. Koby Eskestrand led Saturday’s attack with 3 RBI in a 2-for-2 performance while Bullock went 3-for-3 with 1 RBI.
Bullock is one of three on his team who experienced the thrill of nationals last season, and says he can’t wait for the chance to make an even bigger impact this summer.
“I’m really glad to go back. It’s fun, it’s great baseball just to play there against all those kids. I loved it last year,” said Bullock. “It’s a great experience to talk with new kids that you don’t know from far away, learn how they live and all that.”
Graecon Little and Kevan Schafer both added to the offence with 2 RBI in 2-for-2 outings.
The Canadian Junior Little League Championship runs July 28 to Aug. 4 in Lethbridge. Harrison says he’s looking forward to seeing the team’s core of young players experience the national stage for themselves, while he expects his three returning veterans – Bullock, Schafer and Cade Harrison – will be hungry for a better outcome after settling for bronze last summer.
“They want to get back there and see if we can improve on what we did last year,” he said. “Those three, not having a huge contribution last year because they were the young ones, I think now those three have put in a huge contribution here this weekend and they’re looking forward to getting there. The other ones, this is going to be a whole new experience for them.”
