The race for top spot in the Cascade Collegiate Conference standings is coming down to the wire as the UBC Thunderbirds (27-6, 33-12) host the Bushnell Beacons (16-17, 24-22) for their final series of the season Saturday and Sunday, April 25 and 26 at Tourmaline West Stadium.

Sweeping their last two series and riding a conference-best eight game win streak, the T-Birds are in the driver's seat for their bid to finish as regular season Cascade champions for the second straight year.

The No. 5 ranked Lewis-Clark State Warriors dropped three of their last four to allow UBC to leapfrog back atop the standings, leading LC now by half a game to set the stage for a dramatic finish this weekend.

"The team has a goal to win the conference so obviously we have to win each game and we know that," said UBC head coach, Chris Pritchett who sees many advantages to a strong finish aside from the opportunity to potentially host the conference championship tournament. "If we win out, there are so many positives that come from that as far as the national stage goes, so I think our guys are really focussed on just playing well."

Over the course of their current eight-game heater, the 'Birds have scored a whopping 87 runs as their bats have really come alive at just the right time. Junior transfer Calvin Warrillow led the charge last week with a combined nine hits and nine RBI on the way to earning the conference's player of the week nod. Sophomore David Krahn remains second in conference hits with 62 on the season and third with 44 RBI.

"In this league, you got to have your good players playing their best at the right time," Pritchett added. "Calvin's starting to come along and so are some of the other guys. There's been a lot of hard work put in and it's nice to see them starting to see some success."

"I definitely think we're in a much better spot than we were to start the year. We had a lot of unknowns, people coming from other programs as transfers and we're starting to round into shape. We still haven't had a weekend where everything's there, where we're playing good defence, we're swinging the bats, we're pitching – it's usually one or the other picking us up. To make a run at this thing, they all have to gel at the same time and we're seeing some positive things happening on that front."
 

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While the T-Birds control their own destiny, the Beacons are hardly going to make life easy. After a tough start to the year with three wins in their first 12 conference games, Bushnell has moved within one game of .500. The Beacons have already clinched a berth in the upcoming conference championship tournament and still have their targets sighted on a possible third place finish.

"We played them early in the year and we won all three games down there but we left thinking 'this is a really good team', you could tell. Similar to us, they were trying to figure out some pieces, where players go. They've completely changed their starting pitching which was really the only thing they struggled with when we played them. They have a bunch of division I transfers in the field and they can really hit and they can defend. They just played a really good LC team and they easily could have won all four games. I was able to watch a couple online and they're playing really well so this should be an interesting series."

As important a weekend as this is for both UBC and Bushnell on the field, it also marks the T-Birds' senior weekend where Josh Cote, Jaden Lamothe, Oliver Duthie, Otis Pritchett, Kellen Bourne, Daniel Orfaly and James Brock will all be honoured for their time with the blue and gold.

"It's a bittersweet weekend at least for the coaches because we've seen these kids come in at 17 or 18 years old and really grow as people and players. It's pretty hard to say goodbye, I know it's got to be an emotional thing for them too, potentially playing their last home games here at UBC. It's really channeling your emotions and I want them to fully embrace it and experience it. We want to honour them and say thank you and best of luck, but I also need them to focus on what they need to do. I'm going to try to keep my emotions in check and ask them to do the same and we'll see what happens."

First pitch for the all-important final series of the regular season is set for 1:00 p.m. Saturday at Tourmaline West Stadium, the first game of two doubleheaders, game one Sunday beginning at 11:00 a.m.

Admission is free and all games will be streamed live on the Urban Edge Network.