The Red Deer Dairy Queen Braves knew they’d be in tough during the opening day of the provincial peewee AAA baseball championships at Great Chief Park Friday.
After all they were up against the top two teams in their regular season league in Sherwood Park and Spruce Grove.
“They were the top two teams and getting them both on the first day was a rough one,” said Braves head coach Dwayne Lalor. “We went into it looking to get one win and if we somehow could steal two we would have been looking good.”
But as it turned out the Braves finished at 0-2, losing 10-7 to Sherwood Park and 24-14 to Spruce Grove.
“Now all we can do is look toward winning the next two and getting to 2-2 and then you never know what can happen,” said Lalor.
“They (Spruce Grove) used a lot of pitching against us, so who knows.”
Both Sherwood Park and Spruce Grove are 2-0 as Sherwood Park beat Edmonton 12-2 and Spruce Grove got past St. Albert 5-1.
The Braves face Edmonton today at 3 p.m. and St. Albert Sunday at noon.
The top two teams advance to Sunday’s 3 p.m. final. If there’s a tie for second there will be a tie-breaker with the final going Monday at 10 a.m.
The Braves led Spruce Grove 10-6 before the visitors exploded for 12 runs in the fourth inning to take the lead.
“We couldn’t stop them. Hitting is contagious and once they got on a roll it didn’t matter who we put on the mound they were finding holes,” said Lalor.
“We did a pretty good job offensively, scoring 14 against a real good team, but we couldn’t stop enough. That’s hurt us all season.”
The Braves have pitching depth, but not an ace.
“Everyone can pitch, but we don’t have one dominant pitcher,” said Lalor.
“We have a lot of quality, but sometimes that doesn’t get it done when you don’t have a No. 1 starter.”
But the Braves have scored runs all season.
“We can hit the ball and today we showed some power,” Lalor added.
“We tend to be a singles and doubles, but the kids have made a lot of strides since the beginning of the season and that is the best power we’ve had.”
Austin Hammond lined s two-run home run against Sherwood Park to go with a pair of singles and drove in four runs. Canon Whitbred had a double and two RBIs.
Hammond crashed a three-run home run against Spruce Grove with Zach Olson collecting a solo home run, a single and a walk.
Cooper Jones added a single double, triple, a walk and two RBIs while Whitbred had two singles, a walk and two RBIs and Hunter Leslie two singles and two RBIs.
The Braves used five pitchers against Spruce Grove and three against Sherwood Park.
The Braves have only three returnees from last year — Hammond, Jared Lower and Olson — with Hayley Lalor, Connor McAllister, Austin Sorokan, Brady Steeves and Whitbred up from peewee AA. Zach Baker, Jones, Ben LeBlanc and Leslie played mosquito AA last year.
l Hayley Lalor, along with her sister Jamie, who plays mosquito AA, have been named to the provincial peewee girls’ team and will compete in the Western Canadians next weekend in Edmonton.
Meanwhile their older sister, Kelsey, who plays with the Red Deer AAA Braves bantam squad, was selected to the Alberta bantam girls’ team and will compete in the Canadians in Nova Scotia.
“There’s a lot of excitement around our house right now,” said Dwayne Lalor.
drode@www.reddeeradvocate.com