The 13U Prince Albert Royals punched their ticket to the Western Canadian Baseball Championships after blanking the North East Expos 3-0 in the provincial finals last month. (Logan Lehmann/paNOW staff)

By Logan Lehmann

A second chance

P.A. to host rescheduled 13U AA Western Baseball Championships

Aug 25, 2023 | 4:56 PM

After their tournament was cancelled due to wildfires in Kelowna earlier this month, the 13U Prince Albert Royals are getting another shot at the AA Western Canadian Baseball Championship.

On Friday it was announced that the tournament was rescheduled from Kelowna and will be played in Prince Albert during the first weekend in September.

“It was a real blow to all the teams right off the get-go after the cancellation,” said Prince Albert Minor Baseball President Duane Krip. “Discussion started happening about ‘where’ and if there was still interest with those teams if we could reschedule them. P.A. stepped up and said ‘Hey let’s try and make this work and we can do it in P.A.’ One of the advantages that we have here of course is we just hosted the provincial championships in July so all the infrastructure – everything we need to host a major tournament like this was all in place and it’s just a matter of buckling down and making things happen.”

The tournament was originally scheduled for Aug. 18-20 in Kelowna but a wildfire threatening the city forced its cancellation. The Royals were five innings into their first game at the tournament when the winds shifted and the smoke from the fire became too much, forcing the postponement and eventual cancellation of the tournament.

READ MORE: ‘Absolutely gutted’: P.A. 13U Royals trying to make their way home after Kelowna wildfire cancels tournament

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Now with a second chance at a Western title, the Royals assistant coach Nathan Noble said that having the tournament rescheduled is like the finish line to a season he and his team will never forget.

“We’ve been working since February, six months of playing baseball trying to get to this point and it was just that unsatisfying feeling of you accomplish goals and you got to where you wanted to and then all of a sudden you couldn’t quite play that last tournament of the year so we’re really excited about hosting Westerns this weekend in Prince Albert. It’ll at least cap off the season, win or lose, these kids will have had that experience that they were building towards all year so that’s the exciting part.”

Noble added that the Championships will be modified from the one in Kelowna as two of the original teams declined to participate. As a result, four teams will be competing in P.A. including the Prince Albert Royals (host/Saskatchewan), Consort Cubs (Alberta), Brandon Marlins (Manitoba), and North East Expos (Saskatchewan 2) who are replacing Team British Columbia at the Championships.

The Royals will kick off the tournament on Friday afternoon at 2:30 against Consort. All games will be played at the Kinsmen Baseball Complex at Crescent Acres Park.

A full tournament schedule can be found by clicking here.

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loganc.lehmann@pattisonmedia.com