The Pee Wee “A” Comox Valley Cardinals are provincial baseball champions.
The Cards won the banner in near-perfect fashion in Delta last weekend, posting five straight wins, after dropping their opening game of the tournament, to South Burnaby.
Victories against Burnaby, Chilliwack and Ridge Meadows gave the Cardinals a 3-1 round robin record and set up a Sunday morning crossover semifinal game against Salmon Arm, who finished second in the opposite pool. The Heat, who were in the provincial tournament for the first time in 11 years, jumped out to an early 5-0 lead before the Cardinals began to chip away.
“Jacob Volkers kept us in the game with some strong pitching in the middle innings giving our boys a chance on erasing that deficit,” coaching staff member Jeff Pilon.
The Cardinals waited until the last possible moment to complete the comeback.
Back-to-back doubles from Brier Pilon and Conner Mcnamee, with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning tied the game 7-7 and sent it to an extra inning.
The Heat regained the lead in the top of the eighth, with a solo home run, only to have their hearts broken in the bottom of the inning.
The Cards scored twice in their half of the eighth to win the game 9-8 and advance to the championship match.
The momentum gained in the semifinal carried over to the final and the Ridge Meadows Royals didn’t stand a chance.
The Cards crushed 21 hits in the final for a 15-5 win (five innings) to win the provincial title.
“This was a tremendous performance by all 13 players on our roster as every kid had some contribution all weekend,” said Pilon. “We had terrific support from friends and family all weekend and were the loudest fans by far all tournament.”
The organization passed along a huge thank you to all coaches - Steve Mcnamee, Brad Smith, Jeff Pilon and Robert Mulrooney for all the hard work the past couple of months.