While anything other than a NOSSA Baseball championship for the St Charles College Cardinals would have constituted an incredible upset, the fact that the team did not allow a run against over the course of their four-game sweep of the Collège Notre-Dame Alouettes (twice), Lockerby Vikings and Horizon Aigles suggests this team is well prepared for yet another OFSAA appearance next week in Whitby.

“When you are expected to win, it brings its own set of challenges,” acknowledged SCC baseball coach Jean-Gilles Larocque. “It now becomes a matter of keeping guys engaged, keeping guys composed, playing the right way, doing the right things. Our pitching was really good; we’re fairly deep.”

“And defensively, we were super clean,” he added. “We had no fielding errors and our two throwing errors were on double play turns. Brody Mabbott made an amazing play in centerfield to double up a player at second base that would have been a run, for sure.”

And for as much as the man who also heads up the Sudbury Voyageurs rep baseball program understands that the level of high-school competition locally is not what his players will face in PBLO (Premier Baseball League of Ontario) play this summer, Larocque still demands a professional approach to each and every at-bat that they take.

“We talked about making adjustments – moving up in the batter’s box, for instance,” he said. “You have to stay within yourself. You have players swinging at lower pitches, swinging at higher pitches because they want an opportunity to see decent pitches. You don’t want to build bad habits when you are going right back into league play.”

The Cardinals that will compete at OFSAA include Logan Vaillancourt, Ethan Thompson, Alex Marshfield, Joe Gouchie, Brody Mabbott, Gabriel Larocque, Hudson Fletcher, Jack Barber, Nicolas Signorile, Braiden Paul, Carter Baron, Brett Rienguette, Logan West, Will Arsenault, Owen Lamothe, Colton Nowoselsky, Chris St Germain and Devon Madore.