Canora Celebrates

A day after the Canora Supers won their first SESBL title since 1999 Sunday, I had a chance to talk to Supers' outfielder and Assistant Manager Ryan Kitchen.

CS: Well Ryan, a 13-4 win for you guys over the Jr Cardinals in Game 5, I'm sure that lop-sided score didn't reflect how close that series actually was.

Ryan Kitchen: It was lop-sided at the end, but definitely during the game they really gave us a run for it. We had a good start, a 2-0 lead after the first inning, but they jumped right back out to a 4-2 lead. We were getting pretty nervous for the first few innings, we really had to battle hard. I think they kind of ran out of pitching, they've had a really long season, playing in multiple leagues, and provincials, and nationals. Our goal was just, if we could keep the game close into the late innings we could probably take it from there, and finally they ran out of arms, and finally we took advantage of it.

CS: Exactly, they left for nationals leading the series 2-games-to-1, and then came back, went through 2 or 3 timezones, do you think that played into your favour a little bit?

RK: I think it did. I don't want to take anything away from us because I think we played very, very well, but at the same time, unfortunately, they had to be tired after a very long season, especially after their disappointment of coming back from nationals after just a couple wins. But I think we kept our focus, kept hitting, pitching and playing defense, and were finally able to knock them off.

CS: I guess you could say it's a long time coming, you last won it in 1999, and that was the first time. You've lost in the final 3 times since then (2000, 2002, 2007), so it must be nice to get over the hump.

RK: Yeah, for all the veterans on the team this is very sweet redemption. We've had many disappointments. We've had really good seasons every year since that '99 season, but we've never ever won that final game of the year, so last night was a great feeling to finally do that, no doubt about it.

**Ryan's also the webmaster for http://www.sesbl.com/ , so click the link for more details about Sunday's series clincher and a team picture.