Junior A Warhawks in tough

The Kahnawake Junior A Warhawks find themselves faced with a do-or-die game this Sunday, down 1-0 in their best-of-three series against the St-Leonard Bucs 1.

The first game of the series was one to forget according to Jesse Lahache, longtime Warhawks’ association coach and parent of Junior A player Jesse Lahache Jr.

“Just put it all into a nutshell. One kid dropped a bunt. Nobody on, no outs, and the kid made it to third base. The first throw went over the first baseman, so he ran to second, and then our throw coming back in went over the second baseman and back into the outfield. That was the type of game they had,” said Lahache of the 12-1 road loss.

Although not the coach of the team since he had another team to coach during the summer, the U18 Warhawks, Lahache has been around the team a lot, and has coached all of the Junior A players throughout the years, so he knows what they are capable of and what they can do to win the next two games.

“During the season, they did beat these guys, so they can beat them again,” said Lahache.

The big takeaway from Tuesday’s game, apart from executing on the fundamental plays, is that they need to be more aggressive at the plate, he said.

“If you’ve got two strikes on you, you have to protect that plate, anything close, you’re swinging, instead of standing back and watching a pitch go by, which happened quite a bit yesterday,” said Lahache.

“I think they were just hoping for the walk, and then a curveball or breaking ball drops right in the middle of the zone. And they just got caught looking.”

To get to this point of the postseason, the Junior A Warhawks defeated the DDO Expos in a best-of-three series, winning game one 6-5 and game three 11-7.

Kahnawake finished third in the South division of the Metropolitan Junior A League with a 13-9 record, facing the fourth-placed Expos who finished 11-11.

DDO had a very strong pitcher that threw two innings of no-hit ball, but once he hit his pitch limit and had to be taken out of the game, things got easier for the Warhawks.

“After their good pitcher, the relievers weren’t the greatest. So, if you were patient at the plate, chances are you’re going to walk or you got a nice hit from a nice pitch coming in,” said Lahache.

For him, getting to see the Junior A players have a playoff run is still meaningful, even after years of watching September baseball.

“I know all the kids, I’ve coached every single one of them at one point in my life. It’s nice to see them all out there, still playing the game, still being a kid, as long as they can,” said Lahache.

“And some of the kids have kids. They’ve got two players that both have kids. That’s wild. It must mean we’re getting old.”

Sunday’s game against the Bucs 1 is at 4:30 p.m. at the Kahnawake Sports Complex field. If necessary, game three will be played at Giuseppe-Garibaldi Field in Saint-Leonard on Tuesday September 9 at 7:30 p.m.

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