After finishing in third place in the very closely contested nine-team Upper Canada Major Division regular season, the South Dundas Pioneers worked their way to the championship final at the playoff tournament held in Kemptville in mid-August.
The Pioneers, coached by Kent Young, (assisted by Ben Henry and Chris Fetterly) were in a transition year having lost all but four players from the 2013 lineup. They played some good ball during the regular season to finish in a very tight race that saw Brockville in first place with 31 points.
The next four spots were extremely close with Kemptville Grey in second with 26 points, the Pioneers next with 25, Prescott with 24 and Kemptville Black with 23.
The format for the tournament playoff championship divided the league into three pools, with the top three finishers in each and one wild card advancing to the semi-finals.
The Pioneers after placing first in their pool met the Kemptville Grey.
“The first couple innings were close as Kemptville had a very good starting pitcher,” says coach Young. A couple of big innings put the Pioneers in the driver’s seat and they hung on for an 8-7 win to advance to the championship final against the top seeded Brockville team.
“They [Brockville] had a good team. They were always the team to be from the start of the season,” says Young. “They had a very good pitcher and a very good team. We started off really well and were actually up on them by a run after two. But they didn’t start their ace, and that got to us mentally. The boys knew it would be tough to manufacture any runs off of him. That’s when things started to fall apart. We walked a couple of batters, made a couple of errors in the field and threw the ball around.”
“Then you added their hits, and it was a recipe for disaster. We ended up losing the game 13-3.”
“All in all, I think we did very well for a young team,” says Young. “The kids learned a lot this year. It was a transition year…I had lost all but four of my players so we had eight new players. The start of the season was teaching all the basics.
“The biggest difference for some of the first year guys was the pitching. Pitchers didn’t throw as hard and didn’t have curve balls last year.”
“So the start of the season was a bit bumpy. We did well against the younger teams because they were in the same boat as us. But against the more veteran teams we struggled. They all started to improve gradually through the course of the season. Everyone had something to offer.”
“It is nice to see that baseball has made a huge comeback in the Williamsburg area,” says Henry. “I think the biggest reason is because you have someone like David Lapier in our community who has spearheaded the association. He has spent countless hours getting our association organized and people involved. He has recruited quality people to help with coaching, umpiring and maintaining the fields.”
“It takes many volunteers to make our association successful on and off the field. If it wasn’t for volunteers like David and the others, the kids would be missing out on an opportunity to play such a great sport.”
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