The 18U Prince Albert Royals celebrate a win on the road against in Regina earlier this season. (Duane Krip/submitted)

By Logan Lehmann

Baseball Provincials

18U Royals prepare for provincials after hot streak to end regular season

Jul 24, 2025 | 2:30 PM

The 18U Prince Albert Royals are off to Estevan this weekend as they gear up for the 18U AA Tier 1 Provincial Championships.

The team’s Head Coach Troy Semenchuk said they’re firing on all cylinders.

“We kind of peaked at the right time. We haven’t lost in our last eight games, so it couldn’t be coming together at a better time.”

The team has been on quite a hot streak in their final few weeks of the regular season, winning seven games in a row and ending the schedule with a tie leading up to the provincial tournament. They’ve outscored their opponents 91-58 over that stretch.

“The keys have been being effective with our pitching, getting ahead of pitchers, keeping those pitch counts down, [and] throwing strikes is huge. We’ve got some solid defence behind our pitchers, so we really like to focus on keeping our pitch count down, and that’s really helped us along the way. Our bats have been really, really good lately. We’ve been aggressive on the base paths [with] smart heads-up base running, so we’re really happy with where we’re at going into provincials.”

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“We’ve got some guys that are diving in the outfield and flying around out there, and infield-wise we’ve been turning a lot of double plays. We’ve just really shortened things up over the last two to three weeks, and the results have spoken for themselves.”

Royals infielder Carter Krip has been one of the top hitters for Prince Albert this season, posting a .408 average with 18 RBI’s and 16 runs. (Duane Krip/submitted)

P.A. is one of two northern division teams to make the trip, with the other being the Saskatoon Phillies. The other six include teams from the south with the host Estevan Brewers, Weyburn Beavers, Moose Jaw Canucks, and the Regina Blue Jays, White Sox, and Athletics.

The Royals have not just played every team at the tournament at least once already; they’ve also played in Estevan earlier in the season, something that Semenchuk believes will play in their favour.

“That familiarity is always a good thing, and Estevan’s one of the top teams, and we played them real tough down there. We had a couple of bad innings that cost us, but we feel that we can play with anyone, and I think we’ve lost so many one-run games that could have gone our way that I don’t know if our record is really indicative of the team we’re putting out there. I think we’re much stronger than what our record shows.”

The Royals will begin their run on Friday afternoon against the host Brewers at 5:30 p.m. Then on Saturday morning, P.A. will be back in action at 11:45 against Weyburn, followed by their final round robin game at 5:30 p.m. against Moose Jaw.

Live updates can be found on the team’s official Gamechanger page.

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loganc.lehmann@pattisonmedia.com

On Bluesky: @loganlehmann.bsky.social