It’s going to be a hectic couple of weeks for some Clearwater softball players.
First, local players will host the Peewee and Midgets provincial championships during the July 13 – 15 weekend.
Then nine members of the local Peewee boys team plus two Peewee girls from Clearwater will take part in the BC Summer Games in Surrey on July 19 – 22.
“It’s going to be busy,” said Melody Romeo, one of the organizers.
In Surrey the Clearwater boys will join three from Barriere and three from Merritt to make up the Zone 2 (Thompson-Okanagan) softball team.
So far this season the local Peewee players have played games against Merritt and Barriere, winning against both.
To hone their skills they also have been playing practice games against the local Midgets.
The practice games had one unexpected benefit – the local Midget players, who had not planned on competing at the provincials, decided they were having too much fun, changed their minds, and will take part in the B.C. championships in Clearwater.
The Thompson-Okanagan Zone softball team traveled to Valemount on July 8 to play the team from Zone 8, the Cariboo-Northeast. The Zone 2 team won one game and tied the second. Both were practice matches, Romeo emphasized.
Clearwater traditionally has had a strong softball program for boys and players from this community have made up the majority of the Zone team for the past several years, said Romeo.
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the local girls’ program. The two Clearwater girls will be the first from this area going to the BC Summer Games that Romeo can remember during the nine years she has been involved with minor ball.
“It’s pretty cool that they made it,” she said. “Other communities have a lot more girls in softball and the competition is much higher.”
Romeo noted that the two girls played with a girls team last year but this year have been practising with the Peewee boys.
The nine Clearwater boys going to play softball at the BC Summer Games are Timothy Affleck, Adam Borrow, Julian Dewey-Plummer, William Ellis, Aidan Harley, Ryan Haveman, Curtis Pecor, Karter Romeo and Nathan Weninger.
Barriere’s Owen Hawkings, Mathew Lee and Nicholas MacInnes will join them in Surrey.
The two female Clearwater softball players going to the BC Summer Games are Ali Borrow and Keisha Johnson.
