The Bandits stole away with a record of a win and two losses during a trip down to the Land of the Free over the weekend during a tournament in Whitefish.
The Bandits played twice on Thursday, going up against the Glacier A team and a squad out of Fort Macleod, and wrapped it up with a contest against Kalispell on Friday.
Though the team is a little disappointed with the two losses, both came at scores of 6-5 that was decided in the final inning, said pitcher Carter McDonald.
“I think we were disappointed,” said McDonald, “because both came in the last inning on crucial plays, we both got walked off in both games, so it was hard to take, but i think just being in games down to the wire like that is more pleasing than being blown out.”
Fellow pitcher Ryan Phillips agreed.
“We played really solid, both games we lost, we only lost by one run. We weren’t flat any inning, I thought—It was just good close action.”
The win came on their second game of the day last Thursday afternoon, when they took on the Royals out of Fort Macleod and won 11-3.
“We shut ‘em down on defence and we also had our bats going fairly well too,” said Phillips.
“If you looked at how many errors we had over the weekend, we didn’t have too many errors a game, at the most. So we were fielding the ball well in the infield, our flyballs were fielding well too. Our bats could’ve maybe been a little bit better, but I thought they did pretty well—they stuck in the game the entire course of the game.”
McDonald, one of the leaders in the dugout, noted that the team has been starting to hit their stride now that it’s into the second half of the season.
“I feel like we all know each other now, know what we’re capable of now and we’re having really good games now,” said McDonald, “whereas in earlier parts of the season, we were a bit shaky, but now we’ve got some solid defence and it’s been going really well lately.”