The bantam AAA Ridge Meadows Royals beat Cowichan Saturday at Pitt Meadows Athletic Park by a score of 9 to 2 that puts them fourth in the league with a 4-1-1 record.
Head coach Kyle Lukacs congratulated the team in a post-game talk.
“Good work Graham (Bailey). Good start to another game. Kole (Bernard) shut it down, good work. At the plate a lot better approach. A lot less strikeouts today.
“We had a lot of pop outs and ground outs guys, but still those are more productive than a strike out.”
Lukacs reminded the team that even though they don’t make base but advance other runners, it is still a quality at-bat.
Singling out Colin McMaster who came back to the dugout beating himself up over a sacrifice fly that scored a runner, Lukacs chided the team.
“Everybody should be out of that dugout giving him knuckles saying that’s a productive at-bat, well done.
“And then you should go up to your next at bat and try to do the same thing.”
Lukacs also touched on the importance of consistent lead-offs when base running.
“Liam (Godfrey) was tipping his lead-offs, right, when I gave him the steal sign, he automatically took an extra half step and he was looking more aggressive, right, he crouched down a little bit more, he was ready to go
You should be looking like that every time.”
All-in-all, Lukacs was happy with the team’s production.
“Graham Bailey started the game and he threw really well.
“He got into a little bit of a jam in the third and worked through it.”
After letting up two in the fourth, Kole Benard was called in and he shut it down, continued Lukacs.
“Hitting wise, had a couple of home runs which is good. Helped the offense. Andre Pelletier hit one in the third that put us up early. Ben Stadnik hit a grand slam late to get the lead kind of sealed up,” adds Lukacs.
Their next game is May 3 against South Surrey in White Rock.
Lukacs would like to see the team stay mentally focused.
“They’ve got all the skill in the world, it’s just managing to stay mentally level, stay focused on the next skill at hand and getting the job done as opposed to beating themselves up.”