The Davidson Red Sox peewee girls softball team finished off a short but successful season last month with a strong showing at a tournament in Moose Jaw.
“The girls played extremely well,” said Red Sox co-coach Rebecca Farrell, who was helped in the dugout this season by her husband Todd. “We ended up second in our pool, but didn’t make it to the final. You had to finish first in your pool to go on to the finals, but we were extremely pleased with how they played.”
Farrell said the Red Sox, who consist of Kylee Evans, Teryn Bristow, Breanna Shaw, Sarah Allan, Annika Ouellette, Miranda Farrell, Emily Read, Gracie Allan, Jessica Matheson and Brianna Jess, finished the season at that June 16 tournament due to the Saskatoon peewee B league playoffs being cancelled because of rain. She said the girls’ season usually starts in late April and ends in late June, but due to the long winter and the rainy late June weather this year was a bit different.
“We played our first game on May 10, so it was a really short season,” she said. “But we did play a lot of ball.”
In that five-week schedule the aged 14-and-under Red Sox managed to fit in 11 league games and four tournament games. The ball club went 5-6 at league play and 2-2 during the tournaments in Watrous and Moose Jaw.
“We were middle of the pack this year, so there were some teams that are stronger and some teams that are a little weaker than we are,” said Farrell about their league play in Saskatoon. “In general, the games that we played, the scores were all very close whether we won or lost, so it was a perfect place for us to be.”
Farrell said the team was “extremely young” this year and they had to include some 12-and-under Squirts ball players onto their team, but no matter the age the girls all came together to play some good baseball.
“They all seem to really enjoy playing ball,” she said. “They are just happy to be there and we had some good pitching and good back catching (by Teryn, Breanna, Gracie, Emily and Miranda).”
The Red Sox have historically been a strong club and that has not changed over the past few years playing out of Saskatoon, due to not enough ball clubs in this area to put together a league. Farrell said she expects next year to be just as good and they should be getting a few players back next season from this year’s team.
“The unfortunate part is we will lose some of the girls to different towns. We won’t have enough (girls) for a bantam team next year, which is 16-and-under girls ball. There just won’t be enough players here, so some of them will go play with other towns so that they can continue playing ball.”