The Okotoks Midget Dawgs Black made their second chance at a national title count.
The Dawgs won the Baseball Canada Midget National Championships after dispatching B.C. 4-1 in the gold medal game on Aug. 19 in Quebec City, atoning for their only loss of the tournament and their silver medal from the 2011 national final.
“It’s not so much a rewarding feeling as it is a proud feeling,” Dawgs head coach Brett Thomas said of the national title in his last game with the academy before taking off to coach the College of San Mateo in California. “These kids deserve 100 per cent of the credit.”
First-year Midget Matt Lloyd picked up the win in the final with a complete game pitching performance worthy of a gold medal, allowing just one earned run and striking out 10 batters.
Lloyd, an Okotoks resident and Foothills Composite student, allowed one run on a wild pitch in the first inning, but was dominant on the mound in the final six innings allowing just one hit and two walks.
“I just really tried to keep the ball down and relax more and keep my heartbeat down. It felt like it was coming out of my chest,” said Lloyd, who played most of the season with the Midget Dawgs White – consisting of first-year Midgets. “I really tried to throw a lot of strikes and let my defence work behind me.
“I was really locating my fastball and my breaking ball felt really nice coming out of my hands and felt like it was moving a lot.”
The 16-year-old hurler, who pitched a couple tournaments for the Midget Black team during the year, felt the pressure to perform in Quebec City.
“At the beginning of the tournament I felt really nervous and there was a lot of pressure on me,” Lloyd said. “I felt like I really gelled with the guys coming close to the end of the tournament and felt really relaxed around them.”
Thomas said Lloyd did an excellent job of limiting the damage of B.C.’s dangerous cleanup hitter Matt Strother, who drove in the winning run on a walk off hit in B.C.’s round-robin win over the Dawgs.
“We had to throw him lots of breaking balls and Matt was just super competitive with that pitch and that was his strikeout pitch,” Thomas said. “Matt threw an unbelievable game. Complete game, 10 strikeouts on that stage for him to do that at his age is phenomenal.”
Offence didn’t come easy in the gold medal game, but the Dawgs’ willingness to play small ball paid off in spades versus the British Columbia team.
“It was a gritty, gritty win offensively,” Thomas said. “We ran the bases well, Jared Frew had two (sacrifice) bunts that were huge and set up Eduardo Sanchez’s RBIs.”
Sanchez, a slick second baseman from Mexico City, got the Dawgs on the board with an RBI single in the third inning, scored Roberto Valdez on a sacrifice fly in the fifth and added an insurance run in the seventh on another fly out to score Blake Patterson.
Ramon Valdez then added a fourth run in the next at-bat on an RBI single.
Okotokian left fielder Brayden Munro, the cleanup hitter for the Dawgs, said the team was ecstatic to win the academy’s first national gold medal.
“I can’t stress enough how much this program has done for me,” Munro said. “Just to be able to bring (the title) back to Okotoks is unbelievable.
“We got down early, but just like all year we competed, we battled and we knew nothing was going to stop us.”
The Dawgs missed out an automatic berth to the semifinals after finishing second to B.C. in their pool with a 3-1 record. They would need an epic comeback to get past Saskatchewan 5-4 in the quarterfinal.
The Dawgs trailed 4-2 after five innings, but rallied for two in the sixth and one in the bottom of the seventh, completing the late push on a walk-off base-on-balls to Blake Patterson with the bases loaded.
“That was one of the most amazing games I’ve ever been a part of as a coach,” Thomas said. “They were competing for every single second of that game and they deserved to win that one.”
Thomas said the dramatic quarterfinal win calmed his nerves for the final.
“I was not nervous about our guys’ effort, but just nervous about the situation, maybe being a bit of a letdown to be in a quarterfinal game,” Thomas said. “Once we pulled that game out Saturday I was pretty confident about our chances with Wyle (Cunningham) and Matt (Lloyd) who hadn’t pitched all weekend.”
Cunningham battled through five innings on the mound and Eric Kahl picked up the save in the Dawgs’ 6-3 semifinal win over Ontario, the eventual bronze medalists.
Thomas shared the success of the Dawgs Academy’s first national title with the bullpen of coaches involved in the development of the program.
“This coaching staff is unbelievable,” Thomas said. “Every single person had a hand in this and it’s an amazing feeling.
“Those guys are texting me telling me congratulations and I’m telling them make sure you guys celebrate too because you’re a big part of this.”
The Bantam Black Dawgs have an opportunity to make it two national titles for the academy in as many weeks as they square off in the Canadian Bantam Championships, Aug. 23-27 in Vaughan, ON.
For more information go to www.jdawgsbaseball.ca
