Canada Day was golden for the Cloverdale Rangers.
The 13U AA Rangers went a perfect 5-0 on their way to winning a gold medal in the 2025 Boulanger Memorial Tournament—running over the Ridge Meadows Royals twice in the process.
The tourney was held at Cloverdale Ball Park June 28 to July 1 with several teams from around the Lower Mainland competing.
Going 3-0 in round-robin play, the Rangers opened the tournament with a big 13-3 win over the Langley 11/12 Selects, they then outpaced the Ridge Meadows Royals 11-8, and beat the Abbotsford Angels 9-7 in their final game of pool play.
On Canada Day, the Rangers played in both a semifinal and a final.
First up, the Rangers battled a feisty North Langley Trappers team, but were able to outlast the scrappy squad to advance to the final—and a rematch against Ridge.
Loren Roberts, 13U AA Cloverdale Rangers head coach, said the semifinal matchup against the Trappers was “a nail-biter” with the game needing extras to determine a winner.
“With the score tied in the eighth, the Rangers finished the game with a daring steal at home,” he said. That “daring” play sealed a 9-8 victory.
In the gold medal game, the Rangers found themselves up against the Ridge Meadows Royals again. As the game opened, the Rangers were down by a pair of runs early, as Ridge jumped out to a quick lead.
Cloverdale then rallied in the top of the fifth to tie the game, but the Royals came back in the bottom half of the inning with a rally of their own, adding two runs and going back out in front—this time with a 6-4 lead.
Roberts called the top of the sixth “exciting,” noting that the Rangers “blew open the game” with five runs on six hits. He said the Rangers “flipped” the game to take a 9–6 lead.
He added the Rangers’ fielders “held strong in the final frame, securing the win and the championship title.”
In a strong showing for Cloverdale teams, five of the six championship finals featured hometown squads with the 10U A Spurs also capturing gold.
Boulanger Memorial Tournament
The annual Boulanger Memorial Tournament is held every Canada Day weekend at Cloverdale Ball Park for summer ball teams from U8 to U15. The tourney is named for long time Spurs coach and Cloverdale Minor Baseball Association (CMBA) volunteer John Boulanger. He passed away in 1997 at the age of 56.
In 2014, Todd Boulanger, John’s son, told the Abbotsford Minor Baseball Association his dad’s connection with, and affection for, minor baseball only began by chance.
“When another coach decided to quit, my Dad was the one that stepped up and coached,” Todd said in a post on abbotsfordbaseball.ca. “He coached me in my earlier years but stopped when it got a little more serious.”
After he quit coaching, Todd said he began volunteering.
“He was constantly at the field hours before the game cutting grass, edging the field, liming the field etc.,” Todd said. “He and another dad would be sitting at the park drinking coffee waiting for teams to arrive so they could see their reaction to the design in the infield they made with the mower. Years after I left Cloverdale he would still go down to the ballpark to watch games.”
Boulanger left a legacy of service to the CMBA and the Cloverdale community, which is reflected in the Boulanger Memorial Tournament.
