The Â鶹ÊÓƵeast Royals' inaugural season came to an end Thursday as they were swept from the Prairie Midget Baseball League's AAA division playoffs by the Saskatoon Diamondbacks.The hometown Diamondbacks took Game 1 of the doubleheader 14-11 and followed up with a 12-2 win in Game 2 of the best-of-three series."We were up on the D'Backs early in the first game," said Royals assistant coach Tom Copeland. "But they're on a roll. They've got something to play for because they're still in Westerns, so they were just a little more motivated than our kids. I'm not going to sugar coat it too much."The Royals were also hampered by the fact that four of their players, including Estevan's Tyler Kendall, had been working out all day with Team Saskatchewan's entry for the upcoming Baseball Canada Cup."They'd already played eight hours of baseball that day so by the time midnight rolled around for that last game they were pretty played out," said Copeland.The Diamondbacks will face the Regina Wolfpack in the second round of playoffs while the regular-season champion Saskatoon Giants will face the Yorkton Cardinals.Yorkton upset the Regina Mets in three games, while the Wolfpack swept the Regina Athletics, and the Giants beat the Humboldt Dodgers in two games by a combined score of 20-0.***Five members of the Estevan Haulers bantam AA team were also in action this past week, representing Zone 1 at the provincial Bantam Selects tournament.Copeland said Jolan Lingelbach, Austin Orsted, Calder Clark, Tanner Odgers, and Lucas Lafrentz all played key roles on the zone team that went 3-2 in Regina, and he expects at least one of them to get the call for the Team Saskatchewan developmental team later this week.Zone 1 lost to Regina and Saskatoon but beat Zones 3, 4, and 8."For them to represent Estevan the way they did, our community should be pretty proud that way and all of these guys are future Royals," said Copeland.
