Islanders feeling confident
Team begins play today at national championship
Andrew Macdonald has attended four of the past five Canadian senior men’s baseball championship, but never with the team he spends all summer with. That changes today when the Charlottetown Gaudet’s Auto Body Islanders make their debut at the national championship in Fredericton, N.B.
The 30-year-old Stratford resident said it won’t change the way he plays on the field or the intensity of the game.
“But, absolutely, it’s going to mean a lot to everybody here,” he said Tuesday night at Memorial Field as the team went through its final practice. “It’s going to be great to have a lot of our guys experience it kind of for the first time at the senior level.” The Islanders open again Newfoundland and Labrador at 3 p.m. They will play Manitoba on Friday at 2:30 p.m. and then alberta (8 a.m.) and Ontario One (2 p.m.) on Saturday. Macdonald has witnessed the team’s transition from competing for wins in the early years to a team to beat in the New Brunswick Senior Baseball League. They won the title in 2015 and followed it up with a 22-10 regular season. Now they are looking to make some noise on the national stage. There have been comeback victories and turning points where the team has grown and now they show up to the park believing they can win.
“Even just from last playoffs on, I feel like our team has matured,” Macdonald said. The team has been built around strong pitching with an offence that can put runs on the board and a stingy defence that doesn’t give games away.
While the Islanders are making their first trip to senior nationals as a group, many of them have been picked up to play with New Brunswick entries in the past. Eight of them were with Fredericton or Chatham a year ago. Sean Corcoran was one of the four players wearing the host Chatham uniform a year ago. He was pleased to have been given the opportunity to compete with Canada’s best, but admitted this year is special. “To go for your own province, it certainly has a different feel to it,” he said. “It’s fun to go with the team you’ve played with for years.”