Adrianne Shepherd
Independent reporter
The Stettler Storm senior men’s baseball team headed to the senior AA baseball provincial championship over the long weekend from Aug. 1-3 and came back empty handed.
“It was a great experience and it shows where we need to be for next year,” said Scott McKenzie with the Storm.
Although they came back from provincials without a big win, they were close in two of their three games.
“It was a good experience,” said Kent Hoopfer with the Storm, “we didn’t play our best ball.”
Their first game was on Saturday against the reining provincial champions from Peace River and the Storm were defeated 14-4.
“Our first game of the tournament was against Peace River, the two time defending champs of this tournament,” said McKenzie.
“They hit the ball very well and we made to many errors and ended up losing 14 - 4 in five innings.”
Later in the afternoon on Saturday they took on Camrose and lost 7-2.
“We played better defense in this game; however, our bats were asleep as we only managed 3 hits in the game,” said McKenzie.
In their final game, the Storm lost by a single run to the Edmonton Warriors on Sunday morning.
“Our defense was much improved in this game, we just missed getting a few timely hits,” said McKenzie.
Camrose went on to win provincials in a championship game against Peace River.
Hoopfer said that two out of their three games were played pretty well.
“We hit the ball as good as expected but our defense was not good it was really poor and that is what cost us in the end,” said Hoopfer.
He mentioned that their pitching was decent but that the defense just didn’t match up to the rest of their skills.
He said that they could have easily won their games against Edmonton and Camrose had they stepped up their defensive play and not made the handful of small mistakes they did.
“I thought we have had a very good season although it was frustrating at times,” said Hoopfer.
The team has nearly mastered hitting with wooden bats, and Hoopfer says that there is talk about the Battle River Baseball League might be switching over to wood bats.
“All in all it won’t be a wasted year if the same guys come back next year,” he said. “If the league goes to wood bats we will be miles ahead of the other teams.”
The Storm is extremely grateful for their committed fans for following them and supporting them throughout the entire season.