Parksville’s Quality Foods Royals capped off their 2012 BCPBL campaign with a three-game set on Wednesday.
The locals were trimmed by the Twins in North Shore 2-1, and 4-3 in extra innings, then ran out of gas and lost their make-up game against the Vancouver Cannons as part of the rare, and taxing, tripe-header.
“We played extremely well both games’ against the Twins,” Royals’ skipper Dave Wallace said Thursday, adding “we out-hit them, out-pitched them …we just didn’t get the breaks and made a couple mistakes that put is behind and cost us the win, which was quite typical of the year.”
Game three was also a good game until the late going. The Royals were leading that one 1-0 after two innings, the Cannons went up 3-1 after four, “and then those extra innings started taking its toll on our pitchers and we just ran out of arms.”
Vancouver put up a bunch in the 6th and 7th and final read 14-2.
“For two and a half games we played very well, we just ran out of steam,” said Wallace.
The Royals finish the season at 13-35 and tied with White Rock for 12th out of the 13 teams league.
“Our goal is to get better each month and we did that,” Wallace replied when asked his take on the season, adding “all things considered a last place finish in the league isn’t all that disappointing considering how young our team was and the fact we never once fielded a full roster. The last month we played very well,” he said. Case in point, of the league’s top six leaders in strikeouts the last 30 days, three of them were Royals — Bryan Pawlina, Clayton Isherwood, and Nic Annau.
The Royals wrapped up their season Thursday night with their annual team awards BBQ.
In the meantime, the Royals only lose four players to graduation this year.
Royals’ ace Isherwood is off to Italy in Mid-August for the Team Canada training camp and then to South Korea the end of the month for the World Youth Baseball
Championships. Isherwood, who appeared in 27 games for the Royals over his three years with the team and compiled a 15-6 record, leaves with a phenomenal strikeout-to-walk ratio of 5.4-1 (186-34) — 2 to 1 is considered good.
After the Worlds, Isherwood starts the next chapter of his life at San Jacinto College outside Houston Texas, considered one of the best baseball programs in the U.S.
Pitcher/infielder Pawlina is off to UBC and will be trying out for the Thunderbirds; Liam Joyce, (P/OF) is going into the criminology program at Victoria’s Camosun College; centre fielder Rob Vlaj will be attending VIU and playing football with the Nanaimo Midget Redmen, and Parksville’s Mackenzie Parlow (catcher), who is eligible to play for the Royals next year, is attending UVic.
“But the other 11 are all eligible to come back and I believe are coming back,” Royals’ head coach Dave Wallace said looking ahead, adding those 11 returnees “are the most ever — usually it’s around six or seven, so we’ll have a strong nucleus. We’ll still be young, but we’ll have a strong nucleus.”
Two of those players who have already said they’ll be back next season for their senior year are Calvin Sandhu who pitches and plays 1st, and Clarke Ohman (pitcher/left field) — both players started the season with the Vancouver Cannons but opted to play for Parksville instead.
“The commute’s not that bad — it’s also good to get out of the city for us,” dad Dave Sandhu surmised easily alongside the third base line fence last Saturday.
Sandhu said it was a conversation they had with San Francisco Giants’ Pacific Northwest scout Jim Chapman out of Langley, that prompted them to call the Royals.
“He loves it, they both do,” dad said of the boys, adding “Dave Wallace is a good coach — he’s patient with the boys, and one thing we learned is that it’s all about player development here, it really is,” Sandhu explained when asked why the boys decided to play for Parksville, adding “there’s a lot of pressure on the Mainland kids where it’s win win win, and what does that do for them really? They don’t need to learn how to win a game at this point — they do that in Peewee,” he said as a line-drive whizzed past, and made the point “at this level they need to develop so they can move on to college and take their game to the next level, and that’s the difference here.”
“I have, definitely,” Dave answered quickly when asked if he’s seen any changes his boys’ game. “He’s playing with more confidence now.”
GAME ON
To register for the Royals’ Fall Ball program on line go to www.parksvilleroyals.com/club/development.
