You won’t find them on any bubblegum cards or bobblehead dolls, but the players who will be donning caps and catching mitts to represent B.C. at the 2017 Canadian Women’s Invitational Baseball Championships this weekend are all one of a kind.
The defending national champions, B.C. has all the bases covered when it comes to talent, experience and
dedication. What manager Ken Mac-Kenzie hopes they achieve is beyond the Windsor, Ont. diamond, but as a clarion to every corner of the province.
As terrific as this team is, he mused, imagine how much better it could be if there were more games to hone the players’ skills, more competition to push them? Heck, just public knowledge that girls and women can play hardball if the want?
“They’ve got women’s teams back east playing baseball -- not softball, baseball. It’s baseball,” said MacKenzie. “It’s a secret that’s got to get more exposure (in B.C.), it’s got to get out there into the communities. It’s got to be picked up – there’s just not enough playing.”
The North Vancouver coach says the media attention pitcher/outfielder Claire Eccles received this summer playing with the Victoria Harbourcats should be a major boost in inspiring girls to pick up the glove.
"She was quite surprised how much attention that raised," said MacKenzie of the multiple media spots that came from her stint with the Harbourcats. "We hope a lot of kids saw that as a reason to try it or stick with it."
Like the majority of players, the White Rock native spends most of the year on the softball diamond -- Eccles will enter her third year as an outfielder with UBC's softball team. A lefthander who relies a lot on her knuckleball on the baseball diamond, Eccles was the first woman to play in the West Coast circuit – and first to record a win. She gained the kind of experience that will only be a benefit on the Windsor diamond this weekend.
The squad, which held its final warm-up test last weekend at Robert Burnaby Park against an Over-45 Lower Mainland league all-star squad, has its share of intriguing stories. Catcher and pitcher Amanda Asay scored a Brown University scholarship for hockey and played softball at the Ivy League school before transferring to UBC. The Prince George native, who is closing in on a PhD in forestry, has been a member of the Canadian women’s baseball program since 2005.
Eccles was front-and-centre on many newscasts for making the Harbourcats, and like Asay, a key member of Canada’s silver medal result in baseball at both the 2015 Pan Am Games and 2016 World championships in South Korea.
Mary Harding, of Layritz, is one of a handful of Canadian females over the past 20 years who helped their Little League teams advance to the Williamsport World Series. Burnaby’s Marina DeAngelis, who graduated from Simon Fraser University last year, was a Northwest Athletic Association softball regional all-star, along with New West-born teammate Niki Boyd, as members of Douglas College four years ago. Both were groomed through the Sands Baseball Academy in North Delta.
The team’s roster spans a broad age gap from 17-year-old Kensi Renneberg of Kelowna, 18-year-old Veronica Wong of Nanaimo, and 46-year-old Jaki Braidwood, a Comox Valley teacher.
Softball was the starting point, or a transfer post, for most because that’s where girls and young women are offered more opportunities. Most have come to baseball not because they were thrown into it as youngsters – although you will find a handful who grew up toeing the pitching rubber as players on traditional boys teams – but because they have a passion for it.
“We have 12 ladies here, the under-21 (team in competition) has 11 or 12 and at the younger levels they’re having to go through tryouts and cuts. Hopefully it’s starting there, and maybe with Claire’s achievement and everything else maybe interest will become a little larger all the way through.”
MacKenzie said this group could be in tough to repeat, with talent pools in Ontario and Alberta larger and playing together longer, but would never question their try level.
“When we won last year we were 6-0 in the tournament and our first five games were absolute gems,” said MacKenzie. “Our pitching was really, really good and our defence was the same. We got many timely hits and we just didn’t make many mistakes. We’re going to have a tough act to follow this year to duplicate that.”
The tournament, which started Thursday in Windsor, features four provincial teams – Alberta, B.C., Ontario and Quebec – as well as a team of 20-and-under prospects whose players hail from six different provinces (although six of the 15 players are from Ontario; three from B.C.).
