St. Paul’s Nathan Davies picked up a provincial tier III bronze medal with the Sherwood Park Midget AA Athletics on July 21.
Davies pointed out that the Athletics opened the tournament with a strong 14-1 victory over Whitecourt, but came up against a good deal of adversity against Fort Saskatchewan, coming back from a nine run deficit to take a 12-10 win.
“We were losing to Fort Saskatchewan 10-1, but we came back in our last two at bats,” said Davies, adding that his team had to dig deep to defy the odds against Fort Saskatchewan. “I will give a lot of credit to my coaches for how they managed us during the games when we were down versus Fort Saskatchewan. It was them and our captain who made the decision to change pitchers and to get our heads back in it. The parents and coaches thought the game was over but our captain Ryan (Matwychuk) and his brother Kameron really got us back into the game to fight back for the win.”`
The win slotted the Athletics into the semi finals against Strathmore, where they met an unfortunate 18-1 loss. However, the Athletics were determined the winner of the bronze medal though their win-loss ratio and runs for and against differential at the tournament.
Davies added that the Athletics were no strangers to their competitors entering provincials, as they had all faced off on numerous occasions through the regular season.
“They are teams we have both won and lost against throughout the season,” he said. “Every team we played against was a hard team.”
Davies finished the season with a .250 batting average through 56 plate appearances and a 1.000 fielding percentage with 11 putouts and two assists through 23 games played.
“Fielding, I'm very satisfied with how I did, but batting I think I could have done better,” Davies said of his performance this season, adding that he will need to practice more to adjust to the higher caliber of pitching. “The pitchers know what to do now at this age and some of them are up to the age of 18 and 19 years old . . . I will be practicing by myself over the summer as many times as I can here in town at the batting cage.”
Davies still has two years of Midget baseball ahead of him, and hopes to continue those years as a member of the Sherwood Park Athletics.
