YORKTON - If you are a fan of softball this is a great summer to be in Saskatchewan.
Of course the highlight will be the WBSC Men’s Softball World Cup in Prince Albert July 8-13 ... featuring the best national teams from around the world, but the Men’s Four Nations Cup held in Saskatoon as a warm-up to worlds was also notable.
And then a bit closer to home for many in the province was a ‘barnstorming’ team from New Zealand which has been criss-crossing the Prairies playing games.
The New Zealand Development Boys’ Team – a team of U19 selects – is spending 14 days in Canada, travelling nearly 6,000 kilometres in search of softball competition and camaraderie.
“We used to come every year,” explained team manager Craig Waterhouse in a Yorkton This Week interview between doubleheader games against the Rhein Rockets in Ituna on Canada Day.
Waterhouse, who has managed and coached numerous ISA teams, explained that “if you go back in time” several Saskatchewan softball players spent time playing in New Zealand and that began a connection that led to tours such as the one this summer.
Overall, the International Softball Academy, formed in 2007, hosts international softball tours and academy programmes that expose players to elite softball and elite coaching, details their website. Its mission is to facilitate a friendly exchange and understanding among softball players from different countries and regions while exposing players, especially youth players, to elite softball at an international level.
In eight years, they have selected and hosted 30 New Zealand teams.
This year’s team has 11 players and a player coach with games initially scheduled in Wadena, Laird, Ituna, Kahkewistahaw First Nation, Earl Grey, Fleming, Asessippi Beach, (in Manitoba), Prince Albert, and La Ronge.
It was a hectic schedule but outfielder Carter Lowther said it’s just what the team was hoping for.
“It’s been amazing. Really tiring but in a good way. I’m loving it,” he said.
While liking the steady diet of games, Lowther said the trip is more than that too.
“We’re here for softball, so every game is important,” he said, then adding spending times with opponents – sometimes over a meal, on occasion being billeted for a night – is huge too. “It’s great to get to know them a little bit.”
It’s also about experiencing a bit of Canada along the way.
“Poutine -- I’m dying to try it,” said Lowther.
The entire experience is one Lowther said players will long remember, adding for him the trip certainly rates highly in terms of his softball career to-date.
And what of the doubleheader Canada Day?
Well in game one the New Zealanders managed a win just edging the Rockets and 15-year-old pitcher Shawn Renkas by one run.
In game two though a true veteran of Saskatchewan softball sort of schooled the visitors.
Terry Peppler, who turns 64 in August and has been playing the game for more than a half century went to the circle and mesmerized the young New Zealanders fashioning a shut-out as the Rocket bats came alive for 10 runs.
In spite of the long career the game was the first international team Peppler had pitched against. He termed the experience simply as “awesome.”
Then Peppler expanded on the game, noting how great it was that a team like the one they played would come and play in a community like Ituna. He said as a nation New Zealand “are top-three in the world all the time” so they know how to play the game.
“It’s great to see them coming here and travelling all over,” he said.
So what about his shut-out performance against a ‘select’ team from New Zealand?
Some days things are working as a pitcher, said Peppler, adding “there was a little bit of luck” and the Rockets won.
