Heading into the Valley of Champions youth baseball tournament, the Prince George Knights - normally a good-hitting ball team - knew they had to start swinging the bats.
Thanks to that mindset, and some stellar pitching performances, they came home from Kelowna with gold.
Competing in the bantam double-A division, the Knights compiled a 6-0 record and outscored their opponents 65-28. In Sunday's championship final, they rode the arm of starting pitcher Brennan Bott and defeated Ridge Meadows 7-4. Bott, a lefty, went all six innings, a rarity for players in the 15-and-under age group.
"There weren't a lot of left-handed pitchers - we didn't really see that many and I'm assuming a lot of teams didn't," said Knights manager Buck Schmidt. "He just controlled the game well. He got some ground balls for us and our defence was strong behind him. He just pitched excellent."
With strict pitch-count rules in place for the tournament, Bott was eligible to go the distance because of the team's smart utilization of its other throwers and how well those guys performed. In the Knights' semifinal game, played earlier Sunday, chuckers Colby Clarke and Nolan Hull held off the Calgary Cubs in an 11-8 win.
The Knights began the event with a 19-0 victory against Chilliwack, beat Calgary PBF 8-4, downed Ladner 5-1 and then dumped the host COMBA team 11-8 in the last game of preliminary play.
In their two previous tournaments, held in Mission and Kamloops, the Knights weren't making contact with the ball and it showed in their results. Getting back into the swing on offence made for a much more enjoyable experience at the Valley of Champions.
"In the week leading up to this one, we just said, 'You know what? That's it. We're going to swing the baseball bat and we're either striking out or we're getting hits. We're not going to focus on walks,'" Schmidt said. "Our goal was to swing the baseball bat, hit the ball and essentially that's what happened."
The Knights now have two tournament victories this season and are looking for the latest one to create a positive spin-off when they get to the B.C. Minor Baseball provincial championship, July 27-30 in Victoria. The following weekend, they'll be in Burnaby for the Baseball B.C. provincials, which will send the winner to the Western Canadian championship in Kamloops.
Ridge Meadows, the team the Knights just beat for the Valley of Champions title, entered the event as the fourth-ranked team in the province so the Prince George boys appear to be in the mix when it comes to challenging for a B.C. title or two.
"We're right there," said Schmidt, who was without one of his top players, Derian Potskin, in Kelowna. Potskin is currently in Toronto for the North American Indigenous Games. "We're getting Potskin back for the next two tournaments and that's going to help us even more," Schmidt added.
Other members of the Knights are Jacob Anker, Hunter Fanshaw, Jacob Fillion, Jarron Fillion, Zach Fillion, Luka Kim, Johan Oh, Leigh Peebles and Jacob Ross. Along with Shawn Clarke, Justin Fillion is part of the coaching staff but was unavailable for the Valley of Champions tournament. In his place, Schmidt got a helping hand from Jack Ross.
