SUNDRE – With registration wrapped up and the teams largely set, Sundre Minor Ball is pretty well prepared for the upcoming season.
The organization held its annual general meeting early in February and at the time sought to fill all of the executive’s positions that had become vacant.
Samantha Speight, the new president, told the Albertan there was a good turnout.
“Every one of the positions was filled,” she said.
Leslie Weatherbee stepped in as treasurer while Kat Reimert is now serving as secretary, with Chelsey Tucker taking on the position of registrar and Evelyn McGhee filling the shoes of baseball coordinator.
Players will get a chance to begin practising indoors starting in April at the Sundre Community Centre and possibly the school gyms for a little more than a month, Speight said.
“Hopefully we can get outside earlier this year. That all depends on the weather,” she added.
The registration period ended on March 10, and all of the teams in both baseball and softball are pretty much full up, she said.
“This year, we decided once registration was kind of closed, it’s closed – unless we needed to fill some spots on the teams,” she said.
“It’s looking like all the teams are almost filled,” she said, adding the girls U17 softball squad was still looking for some players.
Overall, she said there are approximately 200 registered players in both baseball and softball.
That breaks down into 15 teams, which are all for consistency’s sake named the Sundre Stealers.
In baseball, there are two teams in all but one of the categories – U9, U11, U13, and U15 – as well as one U18 team. In softball, there are two U11 teams while the remaining categories – U9, U13, U15 and U17 – each have one team.
The baseball teams play in the Chinook Baseball League.
“The Chinook league is like community ball. So, we play surrounding communities,” she said, adding they hope to play more competitively next year.
The softball squads play in the Softball Alberta league and are each tiered, in turn travelling farther away to play against bigger towns with the chance at earning the opportunity to play in provincials, she said.
The regular season winds up by the end of June but can run a bit longer for any teams that qualify for provincials.
