The Portage Padres now know who their opponent will be in the Santa Clara Baseball League Championship Final. It will be another match up with the Carberry Royals. Coach Rod McLeod says they aren't taking the Royals lightly, despite the fact the Padres have been firing on all cylinders lately.

"Carberry has made the finals almost every year since we came into the league," says McLeod. "They haven't actually won the final in any of those years though. It's going to be a compelling final series because if we win, it will only be the second time beating them in the playoffs, while if they win they finally have a championship after a couple of years of disappointment."

History may be on the Royals side, the Padres traditionally haven't played well against Carberry come playoff time.

"We actually haven't fared too well against them in the playoffs," says McLeod. "We're 1-4 and this will be the sixth time in the last eight seasons that we've played them in the playoffs. We lost to them in the first

Lane Taylor gets ready for the pitch.round in 2011 and 2012. We lost to them in the second round in 2014 and 2017. The only time that we beat them, we went on to win the championship."

While the Padres might be on the wrong end of history in the playoffs, this season they managed to win both regular season games with the final scores being 7-4 and 1-0.

Dustin Donald pitched the first game while Jared Roy pitched a gem in the second, allowing the Royals one hit in the game. Royals ace Bret Heselwood pitched in the final game against the Padres and finished with five hits against and an era of 1.19. One advantage Portage has in the match up is pitching depth. The Padres are deep when it comes to players on the mound with Dustin Donald, Jared Roy, Joey Moffat and Chance Dickenson able to take games over and stymie opposing hitters.

On the other end of the field the Padres boast an impressive lineup of hitters such as Moffat and Lane Taylor who have .483 and .415 averages respectively. Donald has 15 RBI's on the year and Tyler Butler has home run power when he connects. For the Royals, they will trot out Drew Allan who tied for the league lead with three home runs during the regular season. In many aspects, this series will be a close one with the teams really pushing each other to take home the title. McLeod says that's a good thing and is excited to play some tight games.

"We've pitched well and played good defense all season so we want to continue both of those," says McLeod. "In the final game against Neepawa, we had our first really competitive game in the past month so I'm expecting games like that for the next two weeks leading up to provincials. That's going to be very good for us because when we get to provincials, the Border West and Southwest teams are going to be the teams to beat and they will be very competitive."

Game 1 will get underway at Republic Park tomorrow. Game 2 will go Monday, July 30th in Carberry while the Padres will host Game 3 on Wednesday, August 1st. The final two games in the best of 5 series aren't scheduled yet.  All games have a 6:30 start time.