The Portage Padres were the first team other than Minnedosa to dawn the Santa Clara Baseball League Championship in 10 years.

They had a great run through the Santa Clara league this year with a 10-1-3 record to finish the regular season in second place right behind the Mavericks. "At the start of the year we faced Minnedosa twice early and that was going to be a big telling sign of our season how we faired in those games," says first baseman Tyler Butler. "We held a pretty big lead in the first game and we kind of threw it away and ended up tying. That may have cost us a trip to provincials but we did a pretty good job after that to go through the season unscathed which was nice."

Their playoff run started with a win over Carberry in four games, and needed six to take out Plumas because of a daylight issue where a game was counted as a tie. Their championship win didn't come easy over Minnedosa coming down to the final inning in the final game of the series when the Padres had a walk off victory thanks to a hit-by-pitch to score a Padres' victory. The Padres missed out on provincials this year but Butler feels it's within their grasp.

"we always try to think about things to come and that would be our next goal is Provincials. Winning the league is always going to be kind of the top of our list right now but we'll hopefully be ready for provincials next year."

It's tough to tell right now how the team will look next season because it is senior sports, but Butler thinks they'll look pretty similar to this year's club. He dds it was all in memory of their good friend Chad Miller.