PBA Dawgs split with UFV, look to round out game in stretch drive

By Lethbridge Herald on April 28, 2025.

Herald Photo by Justin Seward Prairie Baseball Academy Dawgs Joseph Bews delivers a pitch while teammate Noah Garth and the University of Fraser Valley's Max Prevost look on during Canadian College Baseball Conference action on Sunday at Lloyd Nolan Yard.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

The second-place Prairie Baseball Academy Dawgs varsity team are coming off a weekend  at home where they split  four games with the Canadian College Baseball Conference’s best team in the University of Fraser Valley Cascades.

PBA opened the weekend with a 15-2 win on Friday, followed by  a 12-1 defeat on Saturday and concluded the weekend by splitting Sunday’s double header by dropping the first game 4-3 in extra innings and winning the second game 3-0.

“Happy with the split,” said Todd Hubka, PBA head coach.

“After winning the first game of a series, you’re hoping you can win two more and make up some ground on the first place team and we had our opportunity on Sunday to do that in the first game. We came up a little short in the 11th inning but happy with the split (and) wish we could have got three of four.”

Hubka saw UFV as an older club that pitched well.

“They have some 25 year olds that are still in school playing on that team,” said Hubka.

“Hopefully our kids see the maturity in them on how they don’t panic.”

With a couple of weeks to go in the regular season, Hubka still feels the Dawgs haven’t played to their potential.

“We just haven’t, in a weekend series, pitched well in all four (games), played defence in all four and hit in all four,” said Hubka.

“I expect more from our team and I know our team expects more from themselves. We gotta  couple more weeks to keep building on this, kids are out of school now, so it’s just practice and games.”

Between practices being upbeat and building on the thing abovementioned things will  be key for PBA down the stretch.

“The coaching staff’s done a great job this year in helping the kids develop and  hopefully moving forward, we’ll get it figured out here in the next two weeks,” said Hubka.

In saying that about the challenges, Hubka has seen some improvement in the club.

“We’ve been taking care of the ball a lot better than we were earlier in the year,” said Hubka.

PBA had 15 runs on 12 hits in Friday’s game, a run on six hits on Saturday, three runs on two hits in the third game and three runs on seven hits in the fourth game

PBA begin a four-game set at Edmonton on Thursday.