Drumheller Tigerettes recall 1959 championship run
It was 60 years ago that a team of young Drumheller girls went from a scrappy baseball team to provincial champions.
The Drumheller Tigerettes were only together for about three years, but in that time, they were able to put together a winning team.
RCMP Constable Bill Cutts was stationed in Drumheller in 1954 and joined the community coaching baseball.
A shy, sixteen-year-old girl who had never played ball of any kind, and didn’t even own a ball glove, kept showing up to watch her brother play ball at the Little League ball diamond on Riverside Drive and was noticed by Cst. Cutts.
He was thinking of forming a young girls fastball team, and needed players. He asked the girl, Melody Clark, if she would like to play, and also if she knew any other girls who might like to join the team.
The team named themselves the Drumheller Tigerettes, and they ended up winning the 1959 Alberta Junior Girls championship.
This is their story....
While some of the team members have passed away in the intervening years, interviews were held with all who we were able to contact for this story.
Cst. Cutts had married a girl from the valley, Jesse Evans, who came from a mining family from Wayne. One of her brothers was Jack Evans, who played professional hockey, ending up in the New York Rangers organization.
The team had no money to start out with, but managed to gather a few dollars of support from the Drumheller Lions Club. One memory shared by Melody was at a game one day, Coach Cutts showed up with a couple of brand new bats, something they hadn’t had before. Partway through the game, Jesse stormed out onto the field and confronted her husband Bill about where her jar of money she had saved and hidden away, had disappeared to. (Enough said about that).
Gail Blue, nee Zakariasen, said there were no organized sports for girls but they would go and watch the little league Tigers play.
“We all kind of liked sports and activities, and we would go and play football over at the high school (on 5th Street East) yard and pick up games, or play baseball in the street. We were always sort of tomboys,” said Blue.
“We were just dying to do something, we would go to the Knox Church to play badminton or volleyball, but there wasn’t any organization to that, we would just go and see if the auditorium was free.”
She said coach Cutts had a heart of gold and lived right across the street from her family on 5th Street East.
Blue played right field, Clark shared pitching duties with Rita Rovere and Lynn Lawrence, nee Johnson, played catcher.
“I was just so thrilled I got a glove,” said Blue.
Blue said they played a lot of pick–up teams all over the province. They played lots of farm kids and little towns.
“I stepped in a lot of gopher holes, there were hardly any ball diamonds,” she said.
Lawrence said one of the reasons they played so well was even though they were juniors, they were often playing ladies teams.
Gloria Bruins, nee Parge, who played shortstop and third base said in the early days the team was just looking for games and they played against men’s teams.
Lawrence said they went to provincials for three years, twice in Leduc and once in Lavoy. They were runner up in one season and then champions.
Bruins said she believes some of the players were so skilled they could have pursued baseball further.
“You look at the opportunities that are given nowadays…girls can get scholarships for a few things, but it wasn’t that way then. There were a few girls that could play ball and could definitely pitch,” said Bruins.
After the 1959 season, coach Cutts was transferred to Fort Chipewyan where he was honoured at the annual sportsman dinner. The mothers of the girls of the team even published a poem in The Drumheller Mail thanking Bill and his wife Jesse.
Lawrence said the next season her father coached.
Bruins continued to play. A women’s league in Drumheller was running and she played on the Riverside Pharmacy team out of Midland.
“There were some intense rivalries,” she laughs.
She went to train as a nurse in Calgary and she continued to play there.
Lawrence’s love of sports continued. In university, she played and then on ladies teams in later years.
A few of the Tigerettes are still close and enjoy reminiscing about the season when the Tigerettes dominated girl’s fastball in Alberta.
“If it wasn’t for Bill, there wouldn’t have been a team for sure,” said Lawrence.
“60 years, it doesn’t take long, it goes by fast,” said Bruins. ”We were a very close-knit bunch of girls.”
