Zach Waddington’s one-out single in the top of the seventh inning drove home Ethan Christensen with the winning run as the Parksville Royals kicked off a full weekend of B.C. Premier Baseball League play with a 5-4 win at White Rock Saturday.
The rest of the weekend did not go as well, as the Royals (4-12) dropped the second game of the double-header to the Tritons, 11-2, and then were swept at home Sunday by the league-leading North Shore Twins.
In Saturday’s win, starting pitcher Adam McKilliken improved to 4-0 while striking out nine over six innings. Aidan Brot came in to strike out the side in the bottom of the seventh to earn his third save.
The Royals had clawed back from deficits of 1-0 and 4-2 to tie the game with two runs in the sixth inning. In the seventh, Christensen led off with a single and moved to second on Kieran Carcary’s one-out single.
Both runners advanced a base on a passed ball before Waddington drove home Christensen with what would hold up as the game-winner.
After Sunday’s brief homestand against North Shore, the Royals return to the road this weekend, part of a grueling run of 16 away games in an 18-game stretch. Parksville travels to Abbotsford Saturday to face the Reds in a double-header, followed by a visit Sunday to Langley to face the Blaze in a pair of games.
The team will not be back at the friendly confines of Springwood Park until June 4, when it hosts Coquitlam in a pair of league games.
—NEWS Staff
