The Quality Foods Parksville Royals are back in action this weekend with a lot of baseball over two days on the mainland.
Starting Saturday, the Royals are in Abbotsford taking on the Cardinals, who sit three games ahead of the Royals in the standings. On Sunday, the Royals will take on the Langley Blaze who currently sit in third place in the 12 team B.C. Premier Baseball League.
Following their four road games, the Royals will return home for a double-header on Canada Day, against the second place Victoria Eagles.
“It’s going to be a tough weekend,” head coach Dave Wallace said. “We’re going to be fielding 11 players on Saturday and only 10 on Sunday.”
“We’ve got lots of players who are going to be away for graduation events and so while we’re going to be short handed, that’s going to give lots of playing time to all of the younger players on our team. It’ll be good experience and we’ll have our work cut out for ourselves,” Wallace said.
The Royals are coming off a week that saw them win one of three games, giving them a record of 6-22 on the season.
Wallace knows that even though they sit at the bottom of the BCPBL, they’re not out of it yet and still have lots of time to make up ground in the standings.
“That’s the beauty of it for us,” Wallace said. “We’ve got about four other teams ahead of us in the standings who aren’t more than four games ahead of us. We’ve been a competitive team all season long and we’re starting to come around with being consistent in the areas that we need to be.”
“Our pitching and defense has been steady and with the bats looking like they’re starting to come around, we’re hopefully going to be putting a few more wins up on the board to show for it.”
With 16 games left to play in the season, the Royals need to start winning sooner than later and need those ahead of them in the standings to stay right where they are.
Half of the remaining games for the Royals will be played at home, but it doesn’t make a difference to Wallace whether they’re playing at Inouye-Wallace field in Parksville or out on the road, the end result still needs to be the same.
“We just have to win games,” Wallace said. “We’ve been picking up our game on the road, which is great to see. We’ve had a couple of wins on the road here as of late and that’s a confidence builder for a team.”
“All we need to do now is string together a few more wins on the road and get some more wins at home and we’ll be in a better position in terms of the playoff picture.” Wallace said. “That’s our end goal for this season, we want to make the playoffs and I feel that we’re going to be able to meet that goal.”
Opening pitch for the Royals-Eagles double-header on Canada Day goes at noon at Inouye-Wallace Field at Springwood Park in Parksville.