WEYBURN - The Hawkeye Security Weyburn U17 Wild recently claimed the championship trophy at the Regina Minor Softball League’s U17 playoffs, held in Regina on June 25 and 26.
The weekend did not start off as planned with the Wild suffering a bad six-run loss to the sixth place Regina Lazers to drop to the elimination bracket, due to some very poor defense and mental errors they could not recover from.
With the loss, the Wild had to play an elimination game, facing off against the Regina Royals. Due to some much-improved defense and hitting, the Wild came away with a 14-8 win.
The Wild played their third game in a row against the third place Cupar Canucks, and once again with strong pitching, defense, and timely hitting, the Wild moved on to the semi-final with a 10-3 decision.
The Wild faced off against the Regina Lazers in the semi-finals for a chance to compete in the championship game.
This time, the defense performed as expected, backed by a solid pitching performance from Brooke Gardiner, Grace Renner and Lainey Levesque. The Wild eliminated the Lazers with a 9-2 win in six innings. They advanced to a match-up with the Pilot Butte Storm who had won both of their games to make the final.
The final started off with a bang as the Wild scored seven runs in the top of the first inning and chased their Storm starter. Both teams’ pitchers dominated the rest of the game as the bats were shut down and solid defensive plays eliminated any scoring risk.
The Wild ran the Storm out of outs after six innings to claim the win as repeat as RMSL League Champions on the back of a strong pitching performance from Beau Chisholm.
The coaches were proud of the players the way they re-focused after the first game loss to win four straight, by playing “Wild softball” to claim the title.
The U17 Wild now shift their focus to spending the next two weeks getting ready for the U17 BW provincial championships, to be held in Regina from July 8-10. A top two finish will result in a berth to the U17 Western Canadian Championships, to be held in Edmonton on August 4-7.
