The Greater Trail Steelers are getting set to welcome 10 teams to the Silver City for the U12C Regional Fastpitch Championships at Haley Park this weekend.
The Steelers are coming off another successful season winning gold at the Summerland fastpitch tournament, before cleaning up at the league playoffs in Castlegar last weekend. The Steelers went undefeated through the regular season and the playoffs to take the title and advance to regionals.
“Our team is a young group of girls that have been together about three or four years,” said coach Pam Caron. “We’re hoping to make this a very fun-filled tournament for these young girls.”
Caron shares coaching duties with Shannon Ballarin and Heather McKinnon, and despite the teams success, the coach knows they will face tough competition against teams from Prince George, Kamloops, Westside, Enderby, Castlegar, and two teams each from Kelowna and Cranbrook.
“We have only seen a few of these teams that are attending the regionals so hard to say how we will do, but I am optimistic that we should have a good showing.”
Just two years ago the West Kootenay U12C team won the provincials in Kamloops. However, since then, Softball BC has removed provincials for this category and created regionals, explained Caron.
Instead of only 16 teams being able to attend for the whole province, they split the province into five regions to allow less travel and more teams in hopes of promoting girls fastpitch.
As well as hosting the U12C Regionals, the Steelers were invited to attend the U12B provincials in Sicamous July 12-14, after a Softball BC Minor Coordinator saw the team play in Summerland.
“It’s kind of exciting for these girls to be invited to play at a higher level.”
Check out action at Haley Park with the Trail Steelers first game versus the Kamloops Dynamite going at 3:30 p.m. Friday at Park 3 followed by the Opening Ceremonies at 5:30 p.m.