The Cochrane Crush senior baseball squad is hoping hot bats will be the ticket to an Alberta District 3 Little League championship win tonight.
“We’re the best hitting team by far,” said coach Paul Vaillancourt earlier this week of the matchup with Foothills 1 in the Tier 1 AAA division. “Hopefully our bats stay hot come Thursday.”
The Crush went 11-1 in regular play this year and are currently 3-0 in the playoffs. They finish off the 2017 post-season tonight at the Rodeo Grounds South diamond at 6:30 p.m. in a one-game contest for all the marbles.
Vaillancourt said the competing Foothills team is made up mostly of 16-year-old players, compared to mainly 15-year-olds and just three 16-year-olds on the Crush. Despite the stack, the Cochrane sluggers squeezed out a win against the squad earlier this year in a tight and high-scoring game.
“We played them on a Sunday morning early in the season – we beat them 16-14 on their turf … They were stunned when we beat them,” recalled Vaillancourt of the “brutally cold game” in Calgary. “We did not play a very good game that game … I don’t think we’ve given up 14 runs all season. We still came away with the victory because of the bats.”
Leading up to tonight’s final contest, Vaillancourt said he maintained the game plan in practice that has so far worked well throughout the season, since even the bottom of the Crush’s batting order has been picking up pitches.
“We’re going to stick to it, work a lot of hitting and pitching and take it from there … We don’t make any mental mistakes at this stage in the season,” he said, adding with a one-game championship, it’s truly a guess on how tonight could all play out.
“It’s the top two teams,” he said. “It’s anyone’s game.”
