One of the Estevan members of the Southeast Performance Pump Midget AAA Twins is off to college in the fall.
Brett MacMurchy will be hitting the mound in the coming years with the Williston State College Tetons, taking business management for two years at the school.
“My coach Blaine Kovach with the Twins had talked about me going to college to play ball in the States,” said MacMurchy. “We were kind of thinking of places and we'd actually been to Williston about three or four times for ball tournaments. I'd always liked the tournament that they put on. I liked the city and I liked the people there. I thought Williston would be the perfect fit for me.”
Throughout the season with the Twins, including provincials, MacMurchy went 2-7 with a 4.06 ERA in 11 starts. Through 62 innings, he stuck out 48 and walked 28, allowing 73 hits. In 2016, he went 4-5 with a 5.57 ERA and struck out 34 over 49 innings.
“When I was down there for the Williston tournament recently this summer, I pitched and their coach (Shawn Cote) watched me,” said MacMurchy. “He gave me a spot on the team almost instantly and he said that he uses four starting pitchers, and those starting pitchers were all rookies that year. But next year they're all going to be back again. He said I could be very useful coming out of the bullpen or if I wanted to try an infield position or an outfield position he'd let me give that a shot too.”
While MacMurchy is most a pitcher, he did play a bit of infield with the Twins this year. At the plate he went 9-for-49 with a double, a triple and 10 RBI this season and went 10-49 last year with two doubles.
MacMurchy, Kovach and the Twins had high hopes for the season.
“Me and Blaine were kind of talking over the winter,” MacMurchy said. “We really wanted to build a team that could really make a provincial championship run. We had a very strong tryout. We had a lot of players come out, more than usual, and we had a lot of very talented kids on the team. We definitely felt with this team we'd be finishing out the year top three. We had a lot of faith in the team that we had.”
After the first blowout loss while hosting provincials in July, the Twins went out and lost by one run and then another game in extra innings.
Williston is an hour and a half away, meaning that although MacMurchy will be in another country he'll still be fairly close to home.
“That definitely helped me decide where I wanted to go, because it's close to home,” said MacMurchy.
There are only a handful of Canadians on the roster, but that won't be a huge issue for MacMurchy. His goal after his two years at Williston state is to move on to Denver, Colo. for more schooling and baseball.
MacMurchy gives a lot of credit to Kovach for helping him get this far.
“I'm very fortunate to have a coach like Blaine Kovach who's been around the baseball circuit is whole life,” MacMurchy said. “He's a very valued member of the Twins and Estevan Minor Baseball and he teaches us basically everything that I know. I was very fortunate to have a coach like Blaine.”
