Despite not having a league to play in all year, the Jarvie Jaguars pee wee girls softball team finished the season on a high note.
The team travelled down to Calgary July 1-3 for the ‘C’ division provincial tournament, and came away with a bronze medal from the 11-team event.
“It feels really good,” said coach Albert Burchett, explaining that the core of the team has been together for about five years and to win a medal was a big achievement.
In the round robin portion of the tournament, the Jaguars first lined up against a team from Innisfail, and came away with a 12-1 win that was called on account of the mercy rule. Their second game would not end so favourably, as the Jaguars fell to Provost 16-11.
However, Jarvie got right back on track in their third game. Once again they invoked the mercy rule in a 10-1 drubbing of the Calgary West Valley team.
The final game of the round robin was a 17-8 win by the Jaguars over Strathmore, but that score is deceiving, Burchett said, because after four innings the score was tied at 8-8 before the Jaguars put their foot down.
“It was fairly tense there for a while,” he said.
Those three wins gave the Jaguars second place in their pool and a berth in the semifinals against Medicine Hat, which won its pool.
Unfortunately, it was in this game where Jarvie’s championship hopes died in a 6-4 loss.
Regardless of the loss, Burchett said he was happy with the girls’ play, especially in their bronze-medal game against Ponoka.
“It was tight all the way through, up and down,” he said. “Both teams took turns taking the lead.”
In the end, it was the Jaguars who came out on top with a 12-11 win that came down to the final out in the top of the seventh.
Jarvie took a two-run lead in the bottom of the sixth, only to see Ponoka rally for one in the seventh before stranding runners on second and third when the game ended.
Overall, Burchett said the team performed very well all year, especially considering 11 of the 14 girls on the team were in their first year of pee wee ball, having just moved up from squirts.
“At the beginning of the year, I thought it was going to be a learning experience playing against the older girls,” he said, but that was not the case. By the end of the year, he said he knew they had a chance to do well in provincials.
With only three players graduating to bantam ball next year, Burchett said he should have a strong core of players for the 2012 season. In addition, he said he hopes the team can move up to the ‘B’ division next year.
