It was a winning weekend for the Strathmore U13 AA Reds. The team is now Tier III provincial champions after they mercied St. Albert with a final score of 10-0.

Coach Andy Stender explained that the team was very excited to win the provincial tournament.

“We've been talking about it and working our way towards winning provincials the entire season and we made it work. We came together and played well at the right time and ended up going undefeated through the tournament weekend and having an excellent final gold medal game,” he explained.

The Reds played teams from Chestermere, St. Albert, Fort Saskatchewan, and Sylvan Lake.

“On Friday when we played Fort Saskatchewan and Chestermere. We mowed through them pretty well. We had really good games and then on Saturday, we played St. Albert and also Sylvan Lake. Both of those games were extremely tight. At points in the game we had to come from behind and we just kind of we grinded it out and managed to just pick away at their lead and ended up prevailing in both of them by a few runs,” he said.

He said it was just an excellent tournament for the Reds. “Our bats were hot, our pitchers were good and we didn’t make a lot of errors.” About the team, he says there are five players from Langdon that joined up with a number of kids from Strathmore. A few of the kids hadn't played baseball for a while because of the pandemic.

“We threw it all together in a blender there at the beginning of the year and they quickly became friends. They bonded really well and I think that really showed on the ball diamond at the end of the day, and obviously success with the gold medal,” said Stender.

Now that the season is over he explained that the majority of the team are second-year players so they will be moving onto the U15 program and the remaining three of four kids will stay and work to be the leaders for the new U13 team next year.

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