By Matt Pouncy

Medicine Hat K of C Knights finish 5th at home tournament

Jul 2, 2018 | 6:17 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — The K of C Knights finished their home tournament weekend out in a marathon six inning game that featured a rain delay and one of the most wild finishes you’ll see.

The Knights were leading the Fort Macleod Royals 14-13, in the bottom of the sixth and final inning, there were two outs and the tying run on third and winning run on second. Knights pitcher Cole Rath got the sign from home to try a pick off at third and he delivered a perfect throw to third baseman Kayden Berndt who appleied the tag for the final out of the game.

Rath was surprised but relieved that the pick off play worked.

“I wasn’t able to throw strikes consistently there so coach gave me the signal to pickoff and the third baseman was ready for it,” said Rath.

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The Knights fell behind early in this one after giving up five runs in the first and didn’t have a clean inning in the entire game.

They battled though and exploded for seven runs in the top of the fifth to finally take the lead 13-9.

The Royals got a pair back in the bottom of fifth but at the Knights next at bats the game went into a rain delay with two outs and runners on first and third.

After a twenty minute delay the game resumed and on the first pitch Heyden Harrison took off for second which allowed Connor Drevor to steal home before Harrison was tagged out. It turned out to be the game winning run after For Macleod scored a pair in the bottom of the sixth before the pick off.

Drew Niwa, Wyatt Study and Rath pitched for Knights and didn’t have much help on defence as the team committed eight errors in the game.

They were lucky the bats were working as they had 13 hits with Harrison, Berndt, Brandon Hauck, and Kobe Coderre each had 2 RBIs.

Rath says his team did a great staying focused during the delay but still had some fun with the opposing team.

“It was hard, we payed some tic-tac-toe between each team so that was pretty fun,” said Rath. “When it came down to it, (we) just had to stay in it and perform.”

That victory gave the Knights a record 3-1 on the weekend. They just missed out on qualifying for the playoffs as they were three teams in their division with a record of 2-1 after the round robin.

They didn’t make it through the tiebreaker and placed 5th after their consolation win against the Royals.

The Knights started things off with a 10-0 win over the St. Albert Cardinals on Friday, they beat the Calgary Blues 6-2 Saturday afternoon before falling to the Moose Jaw Canucks 19-8.

Intk Hong, assistant coach K of C Knights, was happy with how his team performed over the weekend.

“At the end of the year there’s the district tournament, that’s our end goal,” said Hong. “So going into the tournament we really wanted to work on things that will help us kinda push on towards the latter half of our season, and so I think it was successful.”

Hong says the tournament gave his team an opportunity to work on some stuff they wouldn’t normally do.

On Sunday it looked like some of the those plays worked in the Knights favour.