The U18 AAA Pembina Hills baseball team is looking to qualify for the Tier 1 Provincials tonight. The boys will be taking on the Carillon Sultans to see who qualifies to be among the best of the best, in that age group. 

Head coach Chance Bitzer says while it's a very big game, the loser's season will not end as that team will be heading to the Tier 2 Provincials. He notes their first game in the qualifier mini-tournament didn't go exactly how they had hoped.

"We lost 10-0 to Brandon. It wasn't our best game," Bitzer explains. "We made a couple of mistakes, and it definitely could've been a lot closer. A few balls land off a few timely hits from them, and then having a couple of mistakes for us, that makes for a few bigger innings than there should have been but that's baseball."

Despite the loss in their last contest, Pembina Hills finished the regular season with a winning record going 6-5 with a +2 run differential. Their last two games of the season came against the Sultans but both resulted in losses. Bitzer talks about what they'll want to do differently this time around.

"Not trying to do too much. The mistakes we've been making are because we're either scared to make the big play or we're putting too much emphasis on routine plays instead of just going out there and playing baseball," Bitzer continues. "I think that's all it was in the last one. Hopefully, that nervousness is out of the way, and we can get back to playing baseball and having fun as we did for most of the year."

The Pembina Hills squad will play their biggest game of the year so far tonight at 6:30 in Steinbach.