The Moose Jaw Canucks came up short of their ultimate goal, but completed a stellar season over the weekend.

Moose Jaw finished in the top-four at the 2017 Baseball Saskatchewan Midget AA Tier 1 Championship in Swift Current, falling 12-2 to the Lloydminster AAA Pirates in the semifinals on Sunday.

Three of the teams at provincials played in the Saskatchewan Premier Baseball League’s Midget AAA division this season and Moose Jaw ended up beating one of them, while the other two met in the provincial final.

“I thought provincials went pretty well, given our goal was to be playing in the semifinals and we were playing in the semifinals on Sunday,” said Canucks head coach John Eberl. “That wasn’t an easy task with three AAA teams in the tournament.”

The Canucks opened provincials with a commanding 8-1 win over the Regina Buffaloes on Friday morning. They followed that up with a 9-5 loss to the Midwest Diamondbacks on Saturday morning, which saw Moose Jaw jump out to a 5-0 lead in the first, but the offence went cold after that.

That loss put the pressure on going into the round robin finale against the host Swift Current 57s on Saturday night and Moose Jaw rose to the occasion with a big 12-3 win to secure a spot in the playoff round.

The Canucks’ run would end there however as a slow start cost them against Lloydminster as they fell down 10-0 after two innings and couldn’t recover.

“It was too bad that we did get off to the start that we did in the semifinal,” said Eberl. “After the early hole, the bats came around and I thought if we were playing in a tighter game, we play the game a bit differently on offence and we could have been in there.”

With a long four months of baseball in the books, Eberl said the team should look back and be proud of the progress that they made and the success that they had.

“I thought we improved greatly from when we started into the end of June,” said Eberl. “It’s a tough go to keep everything together and make a run at the league and provincial titles at this age group, but I thought the boys did exceptionally well and improved as well.”

The Canucks won the Saskatchewan Premier Baseball League title two weeks ago on their home turf. In the end, Moose Jaw went 30-7-2 on the year and Eberl said it was a great run for the team.

“Five of those seven losses we were in the ball game and almost won, and so that in itself says that this team was the best AA team in the province in my mind,” he said.