The Burlington Brants hadn't had any tournament play this year until they took part in the Hap Walters Tournament this past weekend. The current leaders in the COBA Major League standings, they have a 10-5-1 record, had a bit of a slow start to the year but have been playing great baseball as of late. They made sure that the rest of the province are taking note of this too as they ran the table this past weekend at 5-0 to win the 2022 edition of the Hap Walters Tournament. 

The Brants got some gutsy efforts from some of their veteran guys both at the dish and on the mound to beat some very strong teams in taking down the tournament win. In the round robin they had wins over the Oakville A's (16-2), the East York Bulldogs (1-0) and the Leaside Leafs (11-3). This gave the Brants 1st place in Division D and a semi-final date with a familiar foe in the Brampton Royals. 

In this game, The Royals were able to strike first as they plated a pair of runs off of Brants starter Trevor Woodjetts in the top of the first inning. After that, the pitchers and defense took over for both teams as Joe Ferreira for the Royals and Woodjetts for the Brants traded zeroes back and forth. The Royals had a good scoring chance snuffed off by a double play in the fourth inning while Burlington looked poised to tie the game but an outstanding over the shoulder, diving catch by Yannick Rickli ended the threat.

The Brants finally broke though in the seventh inning as they managed to finally get to Ferreira for three runs in the inning and take a 3-2 lead to the bottom of the seventh. Brampton went right to work though as they were able to get a pair of runners aboard but Woodjetts was able to finish what he started and was able to shut the door and perserve the 3-2 win.

In the finals, Burlington had anothger stiff test as they had to face the Ilderton RIver Hawks of the Southwestern Sr Baseball League, The River Hawks very fresh off of a hard fought 6-2 win over the Thornhill Reds of the Greater Toronto Sr Baseball League. Burlington got things going in a hurry in the final as veteran slugger Tim Sogan belted a 2-run HR for a quick 2-0 lead after the first inning. Ilderton woukld strike back in the third inning as they strung together some key hits to knot the game up 2-2. 

Not phased, the Brants would answer right back with a run the next inning and after a shutdown frame would add anotgher run via a sac fly to lead 4-2 after five innings of play. It would stay this way until the home half of the sixth inning, where the River Hawks were able to rally for another pair of runs and knot this game up again at four runs a piece. 

In the seventh the Brants couldn't push anything across while for Ilderton they got the win run into scoring position but couldn't cash when they needed it sending this game to extra innings. For Burlington they took full advantage of the situation as they were able to cash in four runs in the extra frame to take an 8-4 lead into the bottom half. Ilderton was unable to make up any ground in their half making the final score 8-4.

Congratulations to all of the Burlington Brants players as well as long time coaches Ricky Ellis and Peter Lambert on their great showing this weekend. Also a massive thank you to Glenn Turner, Greg Cranker, George Moore and everyone else who had a part in putting together this year's tournament. It was a great success. Thank you to all of the COBA teams aho hosted games and made sure the fields were in tip top shape as well.