One of Red Deer's minor baseball teams is advancing.
And one is going home.
The midget AAA Carstar Braves won silver at the Baseball Alberta Midget Performance Provincial Championship this past weekend up in St. Albert, earning themselves a berth at the Western Canadian Baseball Championship in the process.
The Braves opened the tournament with three straight wins, before losing 7-5 to the host St. Albert Cardinals in their final round robin game of the tournament.
A semi-final shut out win over Spruce Grove put the Braves into the final, where they fell 4-1 to Edmonton.
Despite the loss, the second place finish was still enough to give the Braves a spot at Westerns, which will be held this year in Saskatoon August 19th to 22nd.
It wasn't quite the same story for Red Deer's bantam AAA Servus Credit Union Braves, who went into the Baseball Alberta Bantam Performance Championship in Okotoks as the top seed.
The Braves opened the tournament with an 8-0 win over Sherwood Park Gold, but then ran into some problems in an 11-2 loss to St. Albert.
Paced by Nathan Damiani's two for four performance at the plate, which included a home run, the Braves bounced back to double up Foothills Red 6-3 and finish the round robin at two and one.
Reign Letkeman got the ball for the Braves in their semi-final match up against Foothills Black, and he allowed five runs on seven hits in six innings of work as Red Deer lost 7-3 to the Dawgs.
Levi Moon went two for three with a single, a double and an RBI, while Joel Mazurkewich chipped in with a single and a double in the loss.
After ending the 2010 season for the Braves, the Black Dawgs went on to win the Alberta bantam banner, out slugging Sherwood Park 18-14 in the final.
