The Quality Foods Parksville Royals picked up their first win on the road this season with a 6-3 win over the North Delta Blue Jays on Saturday.
It was their only win of the weekend, however, as they dropped four of five games last week.
Colton Tuka got the win on the mound for the Royals in their 6-3 win over the Blue Jays, his second this season. Catcher Cory Bukauskas and left fielder Jacob Ingersoll each collected two RBI’s.
The Royals got off to a rough start last Wednesday, when they took on the Nanaimo Pirates at Serauxmen Stadium in Nanaimo. The previous meeting between the teams saw the Royals beat the Pirates 10-0 in just five innings of play. The Pirates came looking for revenge and found it on the diamond, putting up 15 runs, beating them 15-2 in five innings.
“That was a rough one,” head coach Dave Wallace said. “The last game between us wasn’t their best effort and we knew that.”
“We know the Pirates are a better team than that game indicated and they came to play. That being said, we know that we’re a better team than what we showed and that was a tough game to have but we bounced back well heading in to the weekend.”
With four games in two days, there were plenty of chances to turn things around. In their first game, the Royals dropped a close 6-4 decision to the Blue Jays. Game two saw them earning their first road win of the season 6-3.
On Sunday, the Royals travelled to Coquitlam to take on the Coquitlam Reds for a double header.
Game one was a close game once again, with the Royals coming out on the losing end of a 2-0 final. The second game resulted in another loss for the Royals, this time by a score of 9-4.
The Royals were in good shape heading into the fifth inning of their final game of the weekend, when the Reds put up nine runs in the home half of the fifth to put the Royals away.
“We ran into some trouble in that one,” Wallace said. “It was our own doing too, we just couldn’t hit the strike zone. When we hit the strike zone, we couldn’t make the plays we needed to that would get us out of the inning. We started off the week with an ugly one and we finished with an ugly one, but all in all there was lots of good to take away as well.”
The Royals are back on the road this weekend in Victoria to take on the Mariners June 20. From there, they will play out the rest of June on the road, with double headers in Abbotsford (June 27) and Langley (June 28).