Those four words ring true for both teams this week at the Canadian Little League Championship, which continued Monday at John Fry Park.

Having produced only three national champions since 1965, the Prairie provinces have often felt the sting of defeat.

“I honestly don’t make anything of it,” Lethbridge manager Ryan Ferby said of the Prairie’s lack of success.

Following a 12-6 loss to Mill Woods — the host team’s first victory — both teams’ dreams of being Canadian champions are still very much alive.

While Mill Woods now finds itself in a four-way tie for third at 1-2 with teams from Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic, Lethbridge sits alone in second behind B.C.’s undefeated team from Hastings.

After starting the tournament with a pair of wins — 6-1 over the Quebec champion NDG Lynx and 6-5 over the Atlantic champs from Glace Bay — the Prairie champions remain a confident bunch heading into the tournament’s home stretch.

“Getting off to a good start early has really helped put us in the driver’s seat from here of getting into the playoff round, which was our goal coming here — just to make top four and assure ourselves of a spot in the semis,” Ferby said.

Still with work to do to assure itself of a playoff berth, the scrappy Southwest team knows what it takes to gut out a win or two.

“We don’t hit home runs. We don’t have a big pitcher that throws hard. We play defence well and we run the bases well. We’re kind of a small team,” Ferby said of his squad, which downed Edmonton’s Confederation Park at the Prairie regional tournament to earn its trip to nationals.

“We’ve won some tournaments along the way, but we’ve kind of peaked at the right time, winning Prairies with a good showing there and kind of rolled that into the first two games here.”

With two games left in the round-robin portion of the tournament, Lethbridge is hoping history doesn’t repeat itself this time around when it comes to deciding who will be Team Canada at the upcoming Little League World Series in Williamsport, Penn.

While it has been tough over the last decade for teams from the Prairies to compete at the national level with B.C., which has won the last seven titles, Lethbridge will have a chance to make a serious statement Wednesday when they take on the Pacific powerhouse.

“From what I’ve seen, they seem to have a lot of big kids that hit pretty well and they hit and play defence well. Overall they’re a pretty strong team,” Ferby said of Hastings.