Mosquito A squad battles opponents, weather at provincials

BY JOHN DECOSTE

jdecoste@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

The Kentville Mosquito A baseball team hosted its provincial tournament on the weekend of Aug. 28-30 in Kentville.

As the youngest team in the field, they were looking to gain experience at the provincial level and maybe surprise an opponent or two.

What they didn’t count on was working around the weather: wind and the more than 80 mm of rain that fell on Kentville, mostly Saturday. “It’s unbelievable we got the tournament in at all considering the amount of rain that fell,” said head coach Blaine Sullivan. “It’s a credit to the hard work of the Town of Kentville Rec Department staff, who did a fantastic job. We’re really lucky here in the Valley to have the facilities we do and the commitment from town staff.”

Sullivan also had kudos for Donnie Zwicker and his umpiring crew, and also for team managers Dawn Keddy and Annie MacKinnon, “who did a superb job organizing everything and keeping everything together.”

Groundskeepers were amazing

MacKinnon echoed Sullivan’s sentiments about the grounds crew. “The Town of Kentville groundskeepers were amazing,” she said. “Not only did they help us in setting up, but when Danny rained on our parade they worked to move us to another field and get that field ready for play.”

MacKinnon recalled, “I was closing up the canteen in the pouring rain on Saturday and there were two young men out there replacing the bases on one of the fields to make it ready for baseball. “They were also there Sunday morning to move the water around to get the fields to drain, then relined the fields and, once they were done, they helped us move items from our canteen at the Little League field (which had flooded) to the Bantam field. “They did anything we asked without question and had great spirit!” she said.

Although the Wildcats didn’t win the tournament – Kentville was eliminated in the crossovers – Sullivan was pleased overall with the performance of his young team.

Did very well: coach “We did very well considering we had five players aged eight or nine, and two more who had never played baseball before,” he said. Most of the other teams in the tournament featured mainly second-year players.

New Glasgow won the tournament, defeating Sydney 6-1 in the provincial final. In semi-final action, New Glasgow topped Yarmouth 9-1 and Sydney defeated Hants North 15-3.

No one, even New Glasgow, went through the round robin undefeated. Kentville opened against Hants North and ended up on the short end of a wild 17-11 decision.

The Wildcats then lost 10-9 in extra innings to Woodlawn. In the crossovers, Kentville dropped a 10-2 decision to Sydney and Yarmouth edged Woodlawn 4-3.