Girls fastpitch will be the order of business on the ball diamonds this weekend as Penticton hosts the 14-team, U12C division Regional Championships for the first time.
About 164 girls on teams from as far away as Quesnel and Trail, representing four divisions, will be competing in the two-day event with most of the games taking place at the Lions Park field.
Action starts at 8 a.m. Saturday with a break for the opening ceremonies at 11:30 a.m. followed at noon by a two-hour skills competition.
Penticton has about a half dozen fastpitch boys and girls teams in several different age divisions starting with the U6 group all the way up to U16.
“Fastpitch is an underhand windmill style of softball and since I’ve come to Penticton it’s really grown,” said Peter Forbes who coaches one of the two U12 Penticton teams competing in the tournament and who is helping organize the event. “It’s a huge sport down in the states and huge on the coast where they play year round.
“A lot of the girls that play ice hockey together come and play fastpitch together. We follow the same model as minor hockey where we have an evaluation process at the beginning of the year and then try and split the teams up evenly.”
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His team, the Penticton Power Surge and the other, Penticton Power (Green) will be representing the Peach City.
Power (Green) lost only one of its 10 league games this season and won a pair of medals, silver and gold, in tournaments in Kamloops and Kelowna.
The skills competition consists of six events including a home-run derby, base running, throwing accuracy and distance and either a balloon or egg toss.
“It’s just a fun event, I kind of want to do the egg toss but then I don’t want a whole bunch of broken eggs all over the field that we’ve got to play on right away so I’m leaning towards the water balloon toss,” said Forbes. “I thought we’re going to get broken eggs all over the girls, they probably stand to be a little wet, but not eggy.”
The round robin portion of the tournament runs Saturday with the gold and silver medal playoffs on Sunday.
