The Women’s Canadian Fastpitch Championships are happening in St. John’s this week for the first time since 1988.
Nine teams from across the country have shown up to show off their skills, including two teams from Newfoundland. The games will take place at Lions Park and Victoria Park.
Paddy Phillips, the chairperson for the event, says the committee has been planning the event for nine months. He says they have seen a big increase in participation of female youth over the last few years, and Softball NL has been allocating more resources to women’s softball.
The championship game goes on Sunday. The schedule is here, and you can see the first day scores below.
First West Coast Team Going for Championship in 50 Years
The team from the West Coast makes up in spirit what they may lack on the scoreboard.
There hasn’t been a team from the west coast of the island in the championships for over 50 years.
Coach Ross Crocker says the ladies aren’t in it for the competition – they actually lost their first game 10-0 – but they were expecting that outcome. He says the ladies couldn’t get any financial support from any of the associations and as the deadline to register approached, they had a decision to make – commit or pull the plug.
They chose to pay the $750 registration and all other costs themselves.
He says they’re in good spirits and they’re looking forward to the games this week. And maybe they’ll surprise somebody during the week.
First Day Scores:
Nine games were completed across two fields for opening day, Lions Park and Victoria Park.
Host club Galway struggled at times, resulting in a pair of losses – 8-4 to Équipe Quebec and 13-5 to the Carnduff, Sask. Southeast Steelers.
In both contests, hometown jitters resulting in uncharacteristic defensive mistakes stymied the young club in the early innings before gaining traction in the later innings.
“Quebec always plays that short game that we normally don’t see, so I think we struggled a little bit defending it because they’re extremely good at it,” contends head coach Andrea Wolf.
“Those nerves were already there anyway, so when you’ve got to run in and do a bunch of different things that you’re probably not used to seeing consistently, you have to change your mind set a little.”
The defending champion Calahoo, Alta. Erins started their quest for a repeat by beating the Bytown, Ont. Belles 6-1 and collecting a 3-2 decision over the Saskatoon G-Force.
Bytown bounced back with a 10-0 win against the Animal Health Centre Wildcats (Team Newfoundland and Labrador) in a game called on the mercy rule after four innings. It was the first of two such losses for the Corner Brook-based club Wednesday, the other coming against the Steelers.
The P.E.I. Stealers lost a couple of games, 8-1 to Kars, Ont. and 16-1 to Saskatoon. Kars, however, got to 2-0 with a 12-4 win over Quebec.
Standings
Team – W-L
Carnduff – 2-0
Calahoo – 2-0
KARS – 2-0
Quebec – 1-1
Bytown – 1-1
Saskatoon – 1-1
Galway – 0-2
Stealers – 0-2
Wildcats – 0-2
Thursday’s schedule
Lions Park
9:30 a.m., Calahoo vs. Quebec
11:30 a.m., Carnduff vs. P.E.I.
1:30 p.m., Saskatoon vs. Galway
3:30 p.m., P.E.I. vs. Calahoo
6:30 p.m., Bytown vs. Galway
8:30 p.m., Carnduff vs. KARS
Victoria Park
1 p.m., Quebec vs. Bytown
3 p.m., Wildcats vs. KARS
7 p.m., Wildcats vs. G-Force
