Saskatoon Berries secure first WCBL Championship with 2-game sweep

After just three years in the league, the Saskatoon Berries took home the WCBL championship and did so in front of a record crowd.

“All the boys were locked in,” player Nathan Houston said after the game.

Last year the Berries set the regular season record, winning 46 games, but couldn’t reach the championship, losing in the East final to the Regina Red Sox. Head coach Joe Carnahan said it was the team’s resiliency that brought them the trophy this year.

“Adversity is always good,” he said. “You define a person the way they respond to stuff, and when things get hard, how they respond to that.”

Outfielder Ethan Murdoch, a Swift Current product, said every time the team fell, they got right back up.

“We made a couple mistakes throughout every game of the playoffs, and everybody makes those mistakes,” he said. “It just didn’t seem to really faze us.”

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The Berries took the win against the Sylvan Lake Gulls 11-1 in Game 2 of the best-of-three series to secure the trophy.

While the team got in their hits, Carnahan gave a lot of credit to the pitchers on the mound.

“Our pitching was outstanding,” he said. “Defensively we played pretty good and got some timely hits in there, generated some runs and tonight we scored a ton of runs.”

Berries closing pitcher Wesley Shackelford was named post-season MVP.

The win was special for those born and raised in Saskatchewan, but the Berries players from the U.S. said post-game that Saskatoon has started to feel like home.

“I figured out that I was coming up here a little towards the end of the spring season, but now it’s pretty much home now,” Brooks Jones, who is from Lawrence, Kansas, and plays for the University of Texas, said.

And for those leaving, the diamond will be missed.

“I would have loved to keep playing and play pro. But it’s not in the cards for me, and at least if I went out, I went on my own terms and went on top,” Murdoch, who hit a home run and earned two RBIs, said.

More than 2,500 fans packed the stands at Cairns Field to watch the Berries secure the victory.