The La Broquerie A's are hosting Baseball Manitoba's Provincial 15U AA Championship this weekend.

"We're very excited to be hosting," said host committee event co-ordinator Mitch Tetrault. "I've been going through this with my boys for a few years now, going to different communities and learning from them on how they host. I've always wanted to do it. It's a first for La Broquerie. We know we've got lots of great volunteers. We've done so much work and improvements to our diamonds and our dugouts are all nice and covered, and we've got bullpens. We're excited to be showcasing what we have."

The host A's, the Carillon champion Grunthal Generals and 13 other teams will compete this weekend.

"We're trying to make it special for the players," Tetrault added. "Every game you need to have someone for the official pitch count, you need someone keeping score and you need to have someone making announcements. We'll have three diamonds going at a time and there's five games on each diamond per day. That's a lot of volunteers just to cover the weekend itself not to mention all the preparation that goes into finding all those volunteers and having everything set up. It's a lot of work and hopefully if the weather holds up we can make a good weekend out of it."

Tetrault, who is also the A's assistant coach, says his ball team is really excited to be playing at home.

"We hosted bantam hockey provincials and the boys had fun. Now we're hosting this. The whole Carillon region has worked very hard with our programs and developing baseball players. We're a strong team, they're excited to play at home and they're hoping that they can put their best foot forward."

Tetrault says baseball fans will have a great time watching the 15U AA (which used to be called Bantam AA) provincials.

"They'll be very impressed by the level of baseball. The skill that these players have at such a young age - let's just say I truly believe that the 15-year-old players now are much better than they were when I was 15."

Pool A consists of Bonivital, Grunthal, Morden, North Winnipeg & Elkhorn.

Pool B includes East St. Paul, Charleswood, Portage, Altona & Hamiota.

Pool C consists of Macdonald, Stonewall, Brandon, La Broquerie & Ste. Rose.

The top two team in each pool qualify for the playoffs.

The first and second seeds advance directly to the semifinals.

The championship game is scheduled for Sunday at 6 p.m.


La Broquerie A's
Back Row: Assistant coach Ray Grimard, Assistant Coach Mitch Tetrault, Eric Mateychuk, Darius Morrow, Dustin Broesky, Keyan Grimard, Gabe Ross & coach Mitch Nadeau
Middle Row: Meech Nadeau, Carson Tufford, Rialey Lawless, Zac Tetrault & Dawson Tanner
Front Row: Mason Hartung
Missing: Justin Gudmundson