It was a season blueprint that was followed to near perfection by the Richmond City Chuckers.
As host of B.C. Baseball’s 15U Bantam AAA Provincial Championships, the Chuckers knew for months they would be part of the 10-team tournament. The plan was to make sure they would be peaking at the right time and they did just that.
An outstanding season ended at a sun-soaked Blundell Park on Sunday afternoon with a 5-2 loss to the defending champion Delta Tigers in the gold medal game.
“Silver is always a hard colour to win and I know this is pretty difficult for them right now. But just like I told our parents, you have to look at where this team came from and where it got to go. It’s a really good feeling how it all came together,” said head coach Shawn Hetherington.
“We peaked hard and boys played the best they have played all year. (Assistant coach) Jack (Thompson) and I are pleasantly surprised at how everything worked out.”
The championships unfolded completely to form with the top four seeds —Delta (24-7), West Coast (26-6), Chilliwack (20-11) and Richmond (20-12) — locking up semi-final berths with one game to spare in round-robin play.
The Chuckers being among the league heavyweights is an impressive feat in itself given the size of their association compared to their counterparts. It was only four years ago when Richmond was able to lean on Delta talent before the Tigers program was formed. The Chuckers line-up also featured five, first-year players.
They came up with a big 3-2 win over Cloverdale on Thursday then produced a pair of victories Friday against Kamloops (11-1) and North Shore (10-6). That meant Saturday’s game against the tournament’s top seed and unbeaten West Coast would only determine the semi-final match-ups. Key pitchers were rested in a 6-5 defeat, setting the stage for Sunday morning’s thriller against unbeaten Chilliwack.
The Chuckers jumped out to an early lead and hung on for a 3-2 win behind the terrific pitching of second-year right-hander Jake Finkelstein and the relief work Joey Houston.
“Jake was the best I have seen him all season,” continued Hetherington. “That was the hardest I have seen him throw by far. He was zipping it. Usually against a team like that he will use everything but he probably threw 80 percent fastballs because he was getting it by all of them.”
Houston continued on his 95-pitch count in the championship game and held the Tigers in check for much of the way. Richmond enjoyed an early 1-0 lead when Delta took advantage of a couple of untimely miscues to wrestle the lead away for good.
“It was a tight ball game and a couple of plays happen to go their way,” added Hetherington. “They did exactly what we thought they were going to do and we did a pretty good job of eliminating what they like to do. Our execution just needed to be a little bit better.”
His teaching position at Douglas College means Hetherington won’t be able to continue on next season but says the program is in excellent shape moving forward.
“It is such a good group of kids and for them to peak at the end the way we wanted them to do was awesome. A season like this is terrific for all of their development.”
The Chuckers roster also features Josh Abraham, Nico Cole, Kyle Dodds-Eng, Sean Dolphin, Kyle Hepburn, Nathan Hikida, Shintaro Kawai, Skyler Lenihan, Kyle Matsunuma, Jonathan McGill and Daniel Salazar.
The Tigers go on to represent B.C. Baseball at the Diamond Nation 16U Blue Chip Prospects Tournament in New Jersey, Aug. 7-11. McGill is among the pick-up players they are adding for the trip.
Extra Bases….
• Richmond City Baseball will host the 11U “A” Provincial Championship over the B.C. Day Weekend at the Palmer/Garden City diamonds. The host Chuckers have enjoyed a competitive season at this level, going 6-2-1 in playdowns.
• The Chuckers continued their outstanding inaugural season at the College Prep level by sweeping a best-of-three series from Kamloops to advance to this weekend’s Final Four Championship in Chilliwack.
• Richmond City will also have teams competing at the 11U “AA” and 11U “AAA” Tier Two Provincials this weekend.
