Richmond City Baseball?s Bantam AAAs enter provincials as top seed

Winning the mental game will be the Richmond Chuckers? toughest challenge at this week?s provincial Bantam AAA baseball championship beginning Thursday in Kamloops.

After sewing up Richmond?s first regular season pennant since 2008 with an 8-0 final-game victory over White Rock last week, a result that enabled the Chuckers to finish a game up on the Cloverdale Spurs and Vancouver Mounties with a record of 32 wins and seven losses, they?ll now need to find a way of dealing with being the favourites. It won?t be easy, but veteran skipper Alex Klenman and his coaching staff have implemented several strategies he hopes will help.

?A lot of teams like to play with the underdog label and we can?t do that,? he says. ?But it?s kind of nice we weren?t underdogs all year and usually faced the other team?s top pitchers. We tried to give our guys experience playing under that kind of pressure and they were able to answer the majority of those challenges successfully. To win in the post-season you need to play relaxed and confidently.?

Further, Klenman and his colleagues also recognize the marriage between being physically and mentally ready to play. For the last six weeks the Chuckers have been advised to maintain regular sleep and eating patterns in hopes of giving them their best chance of performing at a peak level during provincials.

There were a few times during the season when the Chuckers lost their focus and dropped the second game of doubleheaders by not being fully invested mentally. But Klenman is hoping his players have learned from those hiccups and able to appreciate every game at the provincials will be important.

Richmond will also have to deal with a new provincial format in which the top five teams will play in one round-robin pool and the teams seeded six through 10 in another. Three teams will advance from the first pool and one from the second.

?It?s called a meaningful game format,? explains Klenman. ?The format is used at nationals and the Canada Cup (under-17 nationals), with the idea being that small provinces like Prince Edward Island don?t always lose to the likes of Ontario and B.C. The same idea applies here. They?re trying to make Bantam AAA more accessible and one way of doing that is not having to face a much higher seeded team right off the bat.?

The change will challenge the Chuckers, who?ll have to face a pair of top-five teams on opening day?Tri-City Indians (26-13 and fifth doing the regular season) at 10:30 a.m. and the Cloverdale Cubs (31-8 and second during the season) at 4 p.m. Given the importance of winning the first game, chances are the Chuckers may have already used their top pitcher by the time they face the Cubs in the nightcap.

The provincial championship will continue through BC Day (Monday, Aug. 5) in Kamloops.

Source: http://www.richmondreview.com/sports/217808391.html

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