INNISFAIL – After falling behind early in their second game of the provincial baseball championship tourney on Aug. 3, the Innisfail Hawks refused to break.
Sure, the Cochrane Crush were hitting well but they had early luck on their side.
But when Hawks shortstop Cash Miller proved his never-give up attitude in response to his team’s early adversity by scoring his team’s first run in the second inning with a splendid slide at home plate his Innisfail team found their bats and never let up.
The Hawks went on to win the game 19 – 9 in the team’s second game of the season-ending three-day tournament in Innisfail from Aug. 2 to 4.
The home team would go on to the semifinals on Aug. 4 but the Drumheller Miners proved to be just too powerful and beat Innisfail 16 – 1.
The Hawks were the host team for the 2024 13UAA Tier 3 Provincials tourney.
Innisfail was joined in the tourney by Cochrane, Drumheller, Hanna Wildcats, Lacombe Dodgers, Sherwood Park Athletics Green, and Strathmore Reds.
Drumheller was the ultimate winner of the tourney. The Miners defeated Sherwood Park 7 – 3 in the tourney final to claim the provincial championship.
Sherwood Park had defeated Innisfail 6 – 5 in the Hawks’ first game of the tourney.
To get to the semifinals the Hawks had to play Cochrane once again, and the game was a lot closer than the first with Innisfail winning 10 – 9 in extra innings and earning their ticket to move on.
“The game against Cochrane had us facing their top pitchers so we had to play some great ball to make it past them. We had some great pitching and solid defense; great hitting in the final extra inning to win the game,” said Hawks head coach Tom Green, adding his spirited squad carried their excellent performance against Cochrane into the early innings of its semifinal against Drumheller.
“We were playing very strong ball the first two innings,” said the coach. “Then Drumheller had a great hitting inning and scored 13 runs in the third inning. That was tough to come back from.
“All in all I was very happy with our team, coming up from Tier 4 and ending in the top four teams of Tier 3,” added Green. “It was a great weekend and a great season.”
Tourney organizer Stephanie Restau said the tournament, which was greatly supported by the Lacombe Dodgers organization, was a success for the team and town despite a lightning storm Saturday evening.
“I thought it went really well. We had to delay the six o'clock games on Saturday for lightning and push them to Sunday,” said Restau, noting the Hawks’ organization did the bulk of the organizing but Lacombe helped with expenses and volunteer support.
“It went really smooth. There was a really good turnout. It was busy all weekend,” she added. “We had food trucks and there were lots of people from the town coming by and even a couple of kids selling ice cream on the side.”
