Although the Estevan GemWell Southeast Elite U16 softball team returned from the Western Canadian championships empty handed, coach Mike Wilson is proud of the girls for their improvement in the provincials and the performance they put on in the Western Canadian championships, in St. Albert, Alta., which resulted in some very close losses for the girls.
“We actually went 0-6, in the round-robin play, so we didn’t qualify for the playoffs, or the championships. But the girls competed well in each game, and the games were a lot closer than what the scores indicated,” said Wilson. “It was a good learning experience for us coaches and the team players. Something we can all build on, next year.”
One of the main things that contributed to the team’s standing in the championship was nerves, noted Wilson, with the excitement of competing in an A-level championship, leading to small mental errors that resulted in lost opportunities.
“They thew the ball around for couple of innings. You score four runs and a couple of innings, and before you know it, the game’s over. We hit the ball, and we just didn’t find the holes,” he said. “We just hit to the players too much.
“We didn’t find the holes to drive in runs. A couple of errors happened here and there, and the games got away from us. We had some really good pitching from our team, but we just couldn’t turn anything into runs.”
Wilson referenced the game against Team Manitoba 2, in which Estevan started with a lead, only to later lose by one run, as an example of the closes losses the team sustained in the tournament.
“The errors kind of took over, as that game went on,” said Wilson. “And too many errors lead to runs.”
Wilson said that if the team had been able to play like they did in the provincials, while in the Western Canadians, it would have been “error-free ball, that would have turned some of those losses into wins.”
He noted that the girls played a high level of ball in the provincials, having worked on a lot of the hitting, cutting down on errors in their games.
“It’s a lot of first year players in there. We only had three veterans, that are graduating from the team this year,” said Wilson “It’s a high caliber of ball, and it’s the top two teams from each province that go to the tournament.”
The girls on the Elite have only been together for three months, and were outclassed in that regard, going up against teams that have been playing together since the start of their season in September. Many of the other teams in the Western Canadians had played as many as 60 games over the course of the season, by the time the championships began.
“Competition was at a higher level than what we were used to playing. A lot of the other teams had a lot of ball sense and skill,” said Wilson. “They were not thinking about the first play, but what they were going to do about the ball in the next play. That kind of caught us off guard.”
Wilson said this year’s performance in both the provincials and the Western Canadians was a reason for everyone to hold their heads high. The girls played an undefeated series of games in the round robin in provincials, coming in second place in the provincial final.
The Elite played six games, with the game against Manitoba 2 ending 9-8, the game against B.C. 1 North Shore finishing 8-1 and the game against Manitoba 1 Central Energy resulting in a 13-1 loss. The game against B.C. 2 South Delta resulted in an 8-0 defeat, and the game against the host St. Albert team ended in a 10-3 defeat. The Elite also was defeated in the game against the Alberta 2 Warriors, with a final score of 10-3.
