Pictured above: Alicia Christensen pitching for the U14 Vipers girls softball team playing against the Trochu White Sox on home turf at the Newcastle Ball Diamonds. (mailphoto by Terri Huxley)

Hey batter batter! The Drumheller girls softball team’s season began last Monday with the season beginning on May 1, as the U14 Pure Venom team played Delburne on home turf in Newcastle.

The league consists of girls ages six to 18 in teams classified as U8, U10, U12, U14, & U16.

President of the Drumheller Girls Softball Association (DGSA) Board, Kent Jensen spoke withthe Mailabout how the teams are shaping up this year.

“It’s fun – they’re all a bunch of great kids,” said Jensen.

This year, the league has two U8 teams, a U10 team, two U12 teams, two U14 teams, and a U16 team. A U18 team could not be made this year as there was not enough interest so with the U16 girls, they hope to come up and take on the new level of play in the following years to come.

“A lot of the girls from the U16 team next year will go up to that so then maybe we can get enough to set another team up, we can start all over again with that one,” said Jensen.

Jensen contributes the steady incline in interest over the past few years to the popularity in the Toronto Blue Jays as well as players recruiting friends at school or other gatherings.

“It’s just starting to take off again and I think with everybody not travelling everywhere, kind of sticking around home with the way that things have been – it’s not an expensive sport,” said Jensen.

For the U8’s, registration with everything included is only $50.

As president, Jensen is in charge of team and umpire schedules, times, location and registration.

“I need to make sure that everybody else that’s on that diamond is practicing somewhere else that day so that they can actually play their games without any interruption,” said Jensen.

“It’s been an eye opener but no it’s been good,” said Jensen.

Jensen looks forward to seeing the older teams engage and set goals to reach provincials.

“The more teams we can get in there would be ideal,” said Jensen.  

Drumheller itself is in the central Alberta league which includes Hanna, Trochu, Elnora, Delburne, Sylvan Lake, Lacombe, Red Deer.

“It’s fairly widespread,” said Jensen.

The Drumheller U16 girls may have competition this year but is debatable depending on which group they get put into.

“Last year it was Elnora and they took provincials so then they had to go up a level,” said Jensen.

Although the board has no plans for an at-home tournament this season, they are gunning to host provincials next year. Each zone brings roughly two to three teams which could lead to more money coming into the town.

“We were maybe going to start planning and host provincials next year instead of a tournament – we thought we would do the big one and try to host provincials for next year,” said Jensen.

You can catch all the action at the Newcastle Diamonds or little league diamond near the Badlands Community Facility (BCF) on Monday’s and Wednesday’s.

The updated schedule on the website can be foundhere.

Craig Stanger of Cenovus presents a $1,000 cheque to Dale Telford of the Drumheller Girls Softball Association (DGSA). Each year, Cenovus donates money to employees who volunteer by clocking their hours. “So if I put in so many hours, they put in so much money,” said Stanger. The money donated will be put towards new baseball equipment within the league.

Garrett Holowath (20) of Rumsey, Alberta, will play baseball for the U21 Alberta team at the Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg from July 28 to August 13.

After one of the coaches in the same men’s league approached him to play for the team, Holowath made his way through try-outs to make the Alberta team.

“I’m left handed and that really helped me,” said Holowath. “I think it gave me a little advantage compared to the rest of the guys.”

After lots of experience and games, Holowath was ready to tackle something higher on the ladder.

“I’ve been playing ball for most of my life so it just kind of worked out and an opportunity presented itself to go and I took it and now we are in Manitoba,” Holowath said.

The team officially formed in October of last year and have been practicing ever since. They have competed at senior men’s tournaments for the last month and a half in order to prepare for the upcoming Summer Games.

For the next 17 days, Holowath will be playing at the John Blumberg Softball Complex in Winnipeg. Sure to be in the cheering section would be Holowath’s family as his grandparents reside in thecentre province.

“My grandparents live in Manitoba so I’ve been coming out here to Portage, Oakville area for my entire life every other summer,” said Holowath.

Holowath is excited and proud to be representing his home province of Alberta.

“It’s a great opportunity and I’m pretty pumped to be out here.”

    The Drumheller Stingers boys peewee baseball team are one step closer to the provincial tournament after playing in atiering tournament in the Valley last weekend.
     In all, six teams including Drumheller, Clive, Olds, Red Deer, Trochu, and Stettler were in the competition. The teams will be playing in a round robin tournament that began last Saturday in Drumheller and will continue in Stettler this coming weekend.
    “It is basically atiering tournament,” said coach Lyle Cawiezel. He explains from these results, the top teams will be in tier 1 and the rest will betired versus similar competition levelscome to the provincials.
    “We are all going to provincials, it is just deciding which division we are playing in so provincials are competitive,” he said.
   In their firstgame, Saturday morning, they fell to Trochu 17-7.
  “It went alright and it should be good this coming weekend too,” said Cawiezel.
    Drumheller had two teams playing in league play this season but combined to go to the provincials this summer. The team is coached by Lyle Cawiezel, Jay Mulgrew, Jeff Paarup and Scoot Freilinger.

The Drumheller Stingers, peewee boys baseball team headed to provincials last weekend and came home with a silver medal.

The team qualified for the championship tournament and earned a spot in Tier 1 of like sized communities. They headed to Trochu for the playoffs.

Coach Lyle Cawiezel said the Stingers matched up in pool play versus Trochu, Clive and Dawson Creek. He said the competition was very well matched and they had to go to a tie breaking formula to determine the ranking. Drumheller made it to the semifinals.

There, they faced Westlock and cruised to a 14-12 win.

“It was a close game and towards the end we kind of held on and it went down to the final out,” said Cawiezel.

This win put them into the championship versus Trochu. The Stingers knew they were in tough as they faced them in the qualifying tournament.

“Trochu is a really good team, they are solid and went undefeated through the whole provincial tournament,” said Cawiezel. “We knew we were going to be in tough and the boys battled really hard, but in the end, it was over for us.”

Trochu won 15-6.

“Trochu is a really good hitting team and they have pitchers that are really tough to hit off,” He said. “We never gave up and we tried to keep up with them but they were just too tough.”

This was a great finish for the Stingers, and Cawiezel said it has been quite some time since they fielded a provincial team.

“It was their first kick at provincial ball, and they figured it out and did really well,” he said.