OLDS — The Olds U17B Pistols won silver in a Softball Alberta provincial championship, which the team hosted the weekend of July 25.
Teams from Edmonton, Parkland, Irma, Lacombe, the Okotoks-Black Diamond-High River area, and of course Olds were represented.
Games began Friday morning at Rotary Athletic Park. The opening ceremony featured special guests: musician Dustin Farr, U.S. university softball athlete Rayna Cruickshanks, originally from Mountain View County, and RCMP.
Unfortunately, rain on Saturday morning forced organizers to move the remainder of the tournament to diamonds OR1 and OR2, then to ORE 4.
The Pistols went 3-1 in round robin play.
They suffered a tough loss in the 1-2 game but bounced back with a win over the Foothills Fury to play for gold.
However, the Fury were just too much and the Pistols ended up with silver.
Olds Minor Softball president and U17B head coach Duane Lowe says the girls had great success in the provincial championship after a not so impressive season.
“We were below .500 teams leading up to provincials,” he said during an interview with the Albertan. “The team peaked at the right part of the season. It all came together at the end.”
The 1-2 game loss against the River City Hornets of Edmonton came down to “one bad inning,” Lowe said.
“River City was a strong team, and took advantage,” he said.
As a result of that loss, the Pistols played in the 2-3 game, which they won, qualifying them for the gold medal game.
That game was close until the bottom of the fifth inning.
“Then we made some errors, and River City took it away from us,” Lowe said. “A couple errors, and that's what cost us the ball game.”
The U17B Pistols will lose a couple of girls when next season rolls around, as they age out and move up to the U19 level.
“The girls are pretty close-knit team and they enjoy playing together,” Lowe said, but that’s the way things go. They’ll obtain some other girls who will move up to U17.
“The team's always different every year, but the core kind of stays the same,” he said.
Lowe said the team this year was good in all aspects of the game, but its greatest strength was hitting.
“We were a very good hitting team,” he said. “We had solid pitching, solid defence, but our hitting generally always came through for us.”
This was the first year that Olds has hosted the U17B provincials.
Softball Alberta officials were impressed.
“We're going to put in to host again next year,” Lowe said. “We've already been asked to by Softball Alberta and the umpires association.”
