A total of 30 teams across six divisions ranging in age from as young six in the Learn-to-Play division and up to 18 in the Bantam/Midget division will take to the Optimist Park diamonds beginning Wednesday night with a full slate of games running through the end of June.
“I think we’re down a little bit in numbers from last year but it’s still pretty strong and we’ll have a lot of girls out on the ball diamonds,” said league president Craig Hemingway. “We still have a number of out-of-town teams – Davidson, Rouleau, Wilcox, Central Butte are all part of the league again this year, so we’re really happy about that.”
Having a chance to host the smaller communities in regular house league play has been the status quo for several years, and one that’s appreciated not only by the visiting teams but the local organization as well.
“It’s nice that those towns are able to come in,” Hemingway said. “We understand that their situations are a little bit different when it comes to finding competition, so for us to be able to welcome them into our league is great. It gives us some variety and it’s nice to have more teams involved.”
Fortunately, all those teams will be able to get on the field in the near future. The original schedule was to have the annual opening ceremonies event at Optimist Park on Monday, but the heavy snowfall over the weekend pushed things back to Wednesday.
Still, it’ll be business as usual.
“We’ve been able to reschedule the games that were missed Monday and Tuesday thankfully, so hopefully we won’t have many more or any more rain-outs as the season goes on,’ Hemingway said. “We’ll be able to slot those games into places on nights that were open, so we’re hoping that will be a situation that works out well for us.”
The organization will also field their usual slate of Moose Jaw Ice representative teams, which will play a full slate of tournaments leading up to provincials. That includes the Squirt, Pee Wee and Bantam A tournaments at Optimist Park during the May 24-26 weekend; Bantam B tournament May 31-June 2; Mites and Midget B tournament June 7-9; Pee Wee B June 14-16 and Squirt B June 21-23.
“Our league mandate is to provide opportunity for everyone to play, as many teams as possible, and along with that mandate is to field teams that are competitive at provincials,” Hemingway said. “So along that line, the higher you finish, that’s great, but the biggest thing for us is to be able to provide those opportunities and develop the kids’ skills. Win or lose, you want to see the kids develop every year and getting better not only as ball players but as people.”
