The Oceanside Crush capped off their season in style last week, playing spoilers and mining a silver medal at the Bantam playdowns.
The eight-team Mid-Island Bantam league, for players aged 14, 15, is made up of three teams from Oceanside, three from Nanaimo, and one each from Ladysmith, and Chemainus.
Played out at different fields over numerous days, the playoffs were split into two pools of four.
The Crush went 3-0 in pool play, edging the Oceanside Springs 7-6 in their opener, then showed plenty of pop crushing the Nanaimo Angels 10-0 in game two last Wednesday behind a one hit, five inning pitching shutout by Liviano Canil.
On Saturday the Crush upset the tournament favourites from Ladysmith 9-5, led by strong performances by Taylor Olson, Marcus Schan, and Jackson Marshall.
In the tournament final played out last Sunday afternoon at Mariner Field in Nanaimo against the also 3-0 Nanaimo Blue Jays, the Crush came up on the short end of a hard-fought 4-2 final that took seven innings to decide.
Canil earned Game MVP for Oceanside in that one with another strong pitching performance and aggressive base stealing.
“Every player contributed to the silver medal with great defensive plays or timely hits,” Crush coach Greg Canil said after the dust had settled. “I was really excited for the boys, I don’t think anyone would have picked our team to almost win it all at the start of the season.”
