SUNDRE – Two local softball players recently brought home silver medals along with a sportsmanship award from the 2023 Alberta Summer Games.
Isabella Packer, who this past season played ball with the tier 1 Sundre U15 Stealers, and Alli Blackhurst, who played for the Olds Pistols U15A team, had previously qualified to join the Zone 2 team to compete at the Games hosted July 20-23 in Okotoks and Black Diamond. Both live and go to school in Sundre.
During a follow-up interview with the Albertan, head coach Krystle Meek said when asked where she had most seen the players improve considering that the Games are different from regular league play.
“It’s a unique team to have 14 girls from eight communities all come together. We had very minimal practice,” said Meek, adding that part of the Games’ guidelines stipulate teams can have only four practices prior to the competition.
That of course doesn’t offer coaches much time or opportunity to develop a better impression of where individual players are progressing or perhaps struggling.
“All these girls play in their own communities throughout the year and have their own regular coaches that helped develop them,” said Meek.
That all being said, the coach nevertheless seemed impressed by how well the team was able to fuse both on and off the field.
“It was really cool to see them all come together so well and pull this off. Their spirit with each other – on and off the bench – never wavered. We were lucky because they bonded right from the get-go,” she said.
“They just never lost their spirit through the weekend and never got down and just always picked each other up; it was really just amazing to watch,” she said, also praising a proactive parent group that didn’t wait to be asked what to do.
The Zone 2 team played three round robin games against some of the other zones, which were split into two pools, she said, adding they won two of those games and lost one.
“One of our games was cut short from the weather, but the rest of the weekend cooperated nicely and we were able to get another game in on Saturday, which qualified us for the gold medal game on Sunday morning,” she said.
There are eight zones overall, and the Zone 1 team from southern Alberta, which is largely comprised of players from the Medicine Hat area, ended up gaining the momentum and went onto win gold.
“Softball was lucky that all eight zones were represented this Games,” said Meek. “It is the first year that the Games have been U15 for softball; traditionally they were U17 before.”
But organizers of the Games were struggling to secure enough participants so decided to try their luck with U15s, which ended up yielding a full roster of teams, she said, adding each zone had their own tryouts.
“The tryout turnout was amazing in our zone,” she said.
“We had over 60 girls try out – so that was amazing – from many, many different communities around Zone 2, and we rostered 14,” she said.
That emphasized that simply being selected to play with the Zone 2 was itself a pretty big achievement for girls like Blackhurst and Packer, she agreed.
“They were both definitely an asset; they brought some very humble talent to the team for sure,” the coach said.
The girls had a ball along the way to earning their place in the final round, and the silver medal was essentially just icing on the cake, said the coach.
“We would have had fun anyways, but it’s always nice to take home a medal at the end of the day,” she said. “We had a lot of fun on and off the field; it was wonderful. I’m so thankful that I had that opportunity.”
Asked her thoughts on the team’s performance, she said, “The girls went out there and they sure gave it a good go. Obviously, it wasn’t the outcome we hoped for. But at the end of the day, we still did really well.”
The Games also provide another chance for the girls to play at a higher level.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for all these girls in small towns that don’t get to play competitive ball as much as they might like to,” she said.
Yet there’s also a rather random element of putting together a squad made up of players from an assortment of different teams.
“All these teams have been thrown together and you just show up, play ball and hope things come together as they did for our team,” she said. “So, we were definitely lucky that our girls bonded so quickly and that transferred onto the field.”
Zone 2 also won the Spirit of the Sport award, which is presented to the zone that demonstrated the fair play, sportsmanship, team spirit, as well as cooperation both on and off the field, and is voted on by bus drivers, food staff, athletes, village staff as well as the other teams, she said.
Blackhurst played right field during the Games and said the team was pleasantly surprised to surpass its own expectations.
“It was really good,” said the 14-year-old. “We hadn’t played together that much and we ended up doing a lot better than we thought we would.”
She said the Games were a memorable experience loaded with fun.
“I met a lot of new people and made a lot of new friendships,” she said, adding they also participated in other activities apart from just playing ball.
Blackhurst has been playing ball about as long as she can remember, going back to a time when she played baseball with the boys because there wasn’t even a girls team.
“And then I remember it was a really big move when we had to just start playing with an all-girls team,” she said. “But it was a better experience because doing softball instead of baseball was just; I found it more enjoyable.”
While the Games represented the wrap up for this season, Blackhurst is already looking forward to next year.
“I will be trying out in Olds, and then if that doesn’t work out, then I will come back to Sundre.”
