The Lewiston Paffile Truckers won their fourth Grand Forks International baseball tournament title in five years, defeating Team Canada 3-1 in the 2012 championship game.
It was Lewiston head coach Jeremiah Robbins' first tournament and while he had heard a lot of good things about the GFI, he was still impressed.
"It was a phenomenal tournament," Robbins said. "Being the new coach for (Lewiston), you get to hear all summer about the great experience up here and they didn't lie, it's beautiful place to play and to come in with a really new group of guys, a new head coach and to come out of this with the title, I'm very impressed with how the kids handled it."
The semifinal games were played on the same day as the final and the Truckers earned their berth in a game right before the championship (beating the Seattle Studs 6-2). Robbins said that they had to be strategic about who to start in the final because of that.
Garrett Wilson started and lasted five innings for the Truckers, followed by Garrett Tygerson, Dave Murrilo and Tyler Curtis and Robbins said he was impressed with his team's pitching.
"We knew we had some arms that had thrown earlier in the tournament but we watched their pitch counts very well, we knew we could get a couple of innings out of them and we felt we could just piece together the last game of the tournament and I thought we did that very well," Robbins said, adding that the team got the hitting when it needed it and capitalized on mistakes by Team Canada.
Lewiston left-fielder Kyle Knigge finished the tournament with a .409 batting average, was named the tournament MVP and he was happy with how things turned out, especially with all the fresh faces.
"It's a whole new team, we only have six (returning players) I think, and it was just a lot of getting to know players and camping out really helps our team bond, it's just a great time to come up here and play," Knigge said.
The fact that Team Canada earned its way into the championship was a boon for tournament organizers and despite having some key players injured, Team Canada head coach Terry McKaing was happy his team made it to the final.
"I was really happy with how we played coming in," said McKaig. "We take this tournament really seriously and I thought we played really solid the round robin game (7-2 over Canada West All-Stars). The Seattle game (a 5-4 loss) was a heart-breaker, yet it was one of those key games for us and that's why we come here, to learn those lessons."
As for the actual championship, McKaig said that Team Canada had a lot of chances and a lot of base runners on but in the end it wasn't enough.
"We all know how good Lewiston is and they took advantage of a few of your mistakes and it was a 3-1 game," McKaig explained.
After a scoreless first inning, the Truckers received runs from Brady Steiger and Jacob Cano in the second inning. Kevin Biro hit a home run for Canada in the seventh but Kevin Knapp scored Lewiston's third and final run in the eighth inning to seal the deal.