Miners eye District title

By Lethbridge Herald on July 18, 2023.

Herald Photo by Justin Seward Herald photo by JUSTIN SEWARD Lethbridge MinersÕ Fawkes Bruinsma slides into second base safe past the tag of Lewistown RedbirdsÕ Tate Mangold during American Legion baseball action at Spitz Stadium on Wednesday night in this June File photo

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

The Lethbridge Miners American Legion baseball team are going into this weekend’s North ‘A’ District Tournament in Vauxhall as the No. 2 seed after a stellar regular season record of 24-4 in conference play.

Going in as the second seed does not phase Miners coach Nicholas Ankermann one bit.

“We think that we’re in a very good position being the second seed,” said Ankermann.

“We have a lot of momentum. We’ve been playing well lately (in) our games. So, yeah, we’re very excited being in the second seed and we think that gives us a good path to make it to the finals.”

The Miners will look to continue sticking to their approaches on the mound, offensively and defensively.

“We find that the games that we have lost, we’ve struggled in more than one of those aspects,” said Ankermann.

“Whether it’s walks with pitching, or errors defensively or just our bats aren’t quite there. But if we’re able to have at least two of those three components, it gives us a really good chance. In a lot of our games this year, we have been able to have all three of those components working for us. So it’s very easy to win a baseball game if everything’s going your way with pitching, hitting and defence. So just having a lot of confidence with that and just try to go in adding no added pressure to ourselves.”

Ankermann said with Districts, there’s definitely that added pressure.

“(With) being a double-elimination game, you definitely do not want to drop your first game because it a long journey to come and make your way back to the finals on that ‘B’ side of the brackets,” said Ankermann.

“So just with added pressure, just try not to let it get to you, and just knowing how they are as players ,and just sticking to what they’ve been doing all year.”

Lethbridge is going in not taking any teams lightly.

“Especially our first game going in against Medicine Hat,” said Ankermann.

“We haven’t seen them since the end of May. So for it being a month-and-half since we’ve played them … we’re not sure what to expect from them. So we have to be coming in to the game with high intensity and a lot of aggressiveness when we’re playing, so that we don’t take them too lightly.”

The Miners begin against Medicine Hat  tomorrow at 4 p.m. in Vauxhall.

The results and schedule can be found at http://www.montanalegionbaseball.org/north-a.

The top two seeds will move on to the State tournament in Laurel, Mont. from July 26-30.