The Cochrane Crush senior boys team set the record straight against the Bow Ridge Rays and along the way earned home field advantage for the District 3 Calgary Little League Championship.

The Rays were the only team to beat the Crush during the regular season and the June 22 playoff matchup gave the Crush a chance to exact revenge with a 13-7 victory. The game was cut short to six innings because of a league mercy rule. The league only allows teams to score five runs per inning and the Crush had already opened up a six-run lead before they had finished batting in the sixth.

That score can be deceiving, though. Up until the bottom of the fifth it was anyone's to win. The Crush took a 1-0 lead into the third but a Rays' batting rally was capped off with a home run blast to right field to put them ahead 3-1. The Crush came back to take a 7-5 lead into the bottom of the fifth. The batting was solid all game but in the bottom of the fifth all the pieces came together and the Crush hit the five-run cap to take a 10-7 lead. They shut down the Rays in the top of the sixth, then scored the runs they needed to cap off the victory.

"We played some small ball today," says head coach Paul Vaillancourt. "We bunted on, we stole some bases, it was great baseball and there weren't many errors. There was some great pitching, great hitting, good base running; it was a total team victory."

"The guys stepped up, some guys who's bats have not been hot this year hit the ball and that was really good pitching, some of the best pitching we've faced all year."

The Crush carefully managed their pitchers so that their top four will be available for the championship game. The league has a pitch count to protect the arms of the young players and should any of them have gone over the set perimeters they wouldn't be available for the final.

Meanwhile, Foothills punched their championship game ticket with a 16-8 win over St. Andrews.

The schedule lists the winner-take-all game for this coming Monday but that may change depending upon diamond availability.