Leader staff

The boys and girls of summer came up a bit short in the U11 provincials on the weekend. But silver isn’t bad!

The second-place finish for the Slave Lake Heat looks even better when you consider how things looked after an opening game loss to the High Prairie Sauce. That was on Friday evening, with storm clouds threatening the whole time.

After that, the Heat and their fans had a whole night and a day to think about the pickle they were in: lose against Red Deer and they wouldn’t even play on Sunday.

But they won, and did it in dramatic fashion, beating Red Deer 17 – 15. The Heat had to overcome a deficit of six or seven runs to clinch the victory.

Gage Romanchuk pitched the first half of the game or so, and was roughed up by the Red Deer hitters for a couple of stretches. He gave way to Drake Conrad, who mostly held Red Deer at bay.

The Heat bats, meanwhile, came to life and they scored a bunch of runs in the later innings to get the lead. Notable hits were a bases-clearing home run by Jake Courtorielle and a triple by Abdul Mouallem that also cashed in some runs.

With the lead in hand, Conrad bore down and closed the game out, allowing little or nothing. For his effort, he was named his team’s most valuable player of the game.

Sunday’s semi-final game against Sherwood Park, by comparison was a cakewalk. Slave Lake won by about 13 runs.

The final three outs were hard to get for the Heat, but the Sherwood Park rally was finally snuffed by a tag by the pitcher at the plate on an attempt to steal home.

High Prairie was back for all the marbles on Sunday evening in the championship final, which ended 7 – 1 in their favour. The difference was their ace pitcher, Kelby Letendre. He was mostly unhittable. The Sauce played well, were clearly the better team, and went home draped in gold.

The silver medal-winning Heat are Jake Courtorielle, Isabella Normand, Eric Martin, Chase Sinclair, Maddax Laing, Ethan Albert, Dom Baxter, Abdul Mouallem, Blaise Poitras, Drake Conrad, Hayden Sloan, Branden Sinclair, Gage Romanchuk and Daryn Gladue. Coaches are Todd Laing, Dion Poitras, Russ Baxter, Steve Giroux and Mike Martin.