Three local softball players have been selected to join the Canada Futures team for a tour of the southern United States this October.
Grace Currie, 16; Taylor Parr, 15; and Jersey L’Heureux, 15, will join a host of girls from across B.C. on a collegiate tour of a Alabama, Georgia and Florida.
The tour runs for nine days, and the girls will get to compete against some Junior Colleges in exhibition games.
It will give them an opportunity to see where they are at skills-wise and provide them with some tools to help them excel to the next level in the sport they love.
Tryouts took place in the Vancouver area on the weekend of Aug. 24-25, and the three locals were able to do enough to impress the program’s coaches.
“They had us do a warm up and then we’d go into game situations,” says Currie. “So we did small games for the majority of the day.
“Sometimes they’d go on for two hours just to see how it would play out.”
Currie tried out for shor stop and centre and earned a rating of two out of four to secure her place on the team.
Her teammate Parr will pitch and play first base on the tour. She earned a 2.5 rating during the tryouts.
L’Heureux will play first and right field and earned a three rating.
Their place on the team is made even more impressive by their age.
The three are among the youngest on the squad that is mostly made up of 17- and 18-year-olds.
Parr says she looks forward to working with the coaches during the tour.
“In ways, they were strict,” she says, “They’re very big on having a very good attitude going into things — they made it clear you can’t have a bad attitude on the tour — but they were really nice and treated us well and tried helping us any way they could.”
L’Heureux says the experience will be a big step up for them.
“I think it will change our game for the better because we’ll be much more competitive when playing at that high level and we’ll be learning so much throughout the week.
“Quesnel games might seem boring to us when we get back,” she adds jokingly.
Parr echoes her teammate’s sentiment about the level of play they will be facing down south.
“We’re playing against college girls, so we’re going to be seeing much faster and more competitive ball than we have in Quesnel.”
Despite the leap in competition, Parr does not feel intimidated.
“I find it more as a challenge to make myself better,” she says.
READ MORE: Quesnel girls help Thunderbirds claim Western Canadian softball bronze
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