The higher seeded Wilkie Brewers and Standard Hill Lakers played host to their respective opponents in the Kindersley Stallions and Lloydminster Twins last night. Deciding to bump the leagues first round trend of home teams having all the fun, Kindersley and Lloydminster each took Game 1 of their NSRBL Semi-Final series last night on the road.

The Stallions went into Wilkie to face the Brewers and came out with a 6-5 victory, while a bit further north in Standard Hill, the Lakers could not tame the Twins as they lost 6-1 to set up a must win game tonight in Lloydminster.

Kindersley starter Corson Harris performed well throwing 4.2 innings in the start, only to be replaced in the 5th by Blake Robertson who would shut the door the rest of the way to help secure the one run victory.

The Stallions bats were self-described as hot, but the offense was still helped out along the way thanks to some shoddy defense from the Brewers. Work with the glove is just one of the things that went wrong for the Brewers last night according to their side of things, but the team still managed to hit the ball in a competitive effort and fall just short of taking the Game 1 victory at home.

NSRBL SCOREBOARD

With the west central series underway, it is providing another branch to the long-standing Kindersley/Wilkie rivalry. Players on each team’s rosters know all about one another, and have had many Sask West Hockey League Battles in the past among other connections.

Now that it has moved to the diamond and a fresh Kindersley franchise is in the mix, it has added some extra excitement to the north league according to Rob Cey with Wilkie.

“Quite genuinely we are excited about it,” explained Cey, “We always like coming to play under the lights in Kindersley, and we have a lot of guys that play hockey and ball that already have a pretty big rivalry in the winter; it will be fun.”

Stallions manager Austin Jamieson shared a similar sentiment about Kindersley’s competition with Wilkie.

“I think it doesn’t take much to re-kindle this rivalry that carries on from the winter months for sure. I think we will definitely be wanting to win that much more, just going up against them that often whether it’s at the ball diamond or the rink.”

The two teams will be back in action tonight for Game 2 as the series shifts to Berard Field in Kindersley. In speaking with Jamieson before the series he noted a few of Wilkie’s top players, including Gavin Wourms who shut the horses down in a road start during the regular season. Jamieson burned pitcher Corson Harris last night in the Game 1 win after the lefty was not available during the first round, and he is confident in his options to provide a good match-up against Wilkie as home-field flips.

“We don’t necessarily plan for our top guy to go at home. We got Kyle Donaldson who pitched both our home games, shutouts, and I think that’s about as good as it gets here in our league.”

With the Stallions likely choosing Donaldson as their Game 2 starter, they still shouldn’t lack confidence headed into a potential Game 3 with the litany of pitching they have. Jamieson noted Tylin Hilbig, Ty McKee, Chad Westman, and the already used Blake Robertson as other potential pitching options for the Stallions as playoffs typically bring higher leverage situations.

Although the Stallions helped stop the early trend of home team domination in its tracks last night, they certainly have to be hoping the home-cooking is back tonight. Similar to everyone the Stallions seem to play better at home, a first round advantage the Stallions will no longer see as the lowest remaining seed.

“I think every team plays better at home, and that’s been our case the last couple of years for sure,” said Jamieson, “We play at home and have pretty nice diamonds, full grass infield, but then you go somewhere and get the full shale infield and get some tough hops.”

Jamieson was quick to convey the lackluster diamonds are more of an annoyance than anything, but at the same time it creates another excellent example of what having home-field advantage can do.

“Having home-field was definitely huge for us last series," stated Jamison, who's teams represents the lowest remaining seed and will lack the home-field advantage coming up, "It will be tough. We are Game 1 on the road the rest of the way here.”

The recent home/away trend is not news to the Brewers who played their entire series with the North Battleford Beavers in just three days, and were forced to sit and wait for nearly a week between games as the first round went the distance. Even though it was quick, their series saw a similar pattern to the rest of them (Stallions saw a run differential of +19 during their two home shutouts) as 2 blowouts surrounded a tight 3-0 road loss in Game 2.

“We sure ran into a hot pitcher in Kelly Baillargeon with the Beavers the other day, everyone is tougher to beat at home,” said Cey in describing the loss, “They defensively played the best game I have ever seen from them. I think Baillargeon only had a couple strikeouts but we couldn’t hit any holes and that’s just how baseball goes sometimes.”

First pitch for Stallions/Brewers Game 2 is set for 7:30 tonight from Berard Field in Kindersley. The Stallions can move onto the NSRBL finals, while Wilkie looks to keep their season alive on the road.