Miners on a roll heading into District tournament

By Lethbridge Herald on July 15, 2022.

Herald FILE photo Herald File photo Lethbridge American Legion Miners Dylan Asplund tries to pick a ball out of the dirt against the Calgary Strive in a May 2022 game at Spitz Stadium in this file photo.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

The Lethbridge American Legion Miners ‘A’ baseball are on tear of late and placed second in the Canadian conference with a 7-5 record heading int the District  tournament in Montana next week.

The Miners compiled a record of 5-1 on their recent road trip to finish up conference play and in that stretch won games in Medicine Hat, Great Falls and Conrad, Mon.

“A couple of games could have gone either way,” said Miners coach Nicholas Ankermann, on season play.

“We could have won those games but we were  unfortunately able to pull them out. You put a few games that could have gone either way, so (our) record could have been better or could have been worse. Currently, right now, we’re happy with how things did play out in the end. We know we were fighting for that second-place position. So we really thought we were able to end the season on high note — winning our final two conference games against Medicine Hat and put us in that good opportunity to clinch second place.”

The Canadian side representation at District will be Calgary, Vauxhall, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.

On the States side, it will be the first place Lewistown, Havre, Tri-County and Great Falls.

The Miners will open up against Tri-County on Thursday.

“ So far, competition from what we kind of noticed, is either the teams are really good or really bad,” said Ankermann.

“There’s a few lower teams we know that we can kind of go in (and) win the game pretty easily. But then there’s those top teams where it’s like we know we have to come in and we got to play our style of baseball and bring our intensity and minimize some of those mental and physical mistakes.”

Ankermann felt the team has made strides up to this point after hitting a rocky point  in midseason.

“But we were able to kind of turn that around these last few weekends, winning five-of six games … and then having a pretty good game against Vauxhall last night (Thursday 16-12 loss), it’s just an exhibition game. We’ve been on the uphill slope from that rocky middle of the season we’ve had. So we’re just hoping to keep that momentum going.”

The Miners will play tune-up games against Lewistown over  the weekend.

The tournament is a double elimination as once a team loses two games, they’re eliminated.

The Top two teams from the Distric will move onto the State tournament on the following weekend and whoever wins the State will go to the Regional tournament.