It’s been a while since Yellowknife has sent a girls softball team to play in a provincial championship in Alberta.
It’s also been a while since Yellowknife has won a provincial softball championship in Alberta. If you can’t remember when, don’t worry — seems no one else can remember, either.
But the important thing is that it’s happened and it’s the Yellowknife Wolverines U19 girls outfit that turned the trick in Blackfalds, Alta., on Sunday afternoon.
The Wolverines captured the D division crown at the Alberta Softball U19 provincials thanks to a rather nervy 7-6 victory over the Red Deer Rage in the final. It’s the first time a girls minor ball team from the city has won a title of any sort in a long time.
Coach Greg Skauge said entering the girls in the D division felt like the best idea considering these girls have never played in a provincial championship before and there was no idea as to what they would be facing.
“It was the first time they had been together as a team and their first time playing against girls,” he said. “They’re all split up in house league (in Yellowknife) and they’re playing with and against the boys. We had no way to gauge ourselves, so being in D was the best spot to be, I felt.”
The Wolverines started off against the Fort Saskatchewan Sliders, a game they lost 5-3, but there were plenty of chances for the ladies to come out on top, said Skauge.
“We played really well, but we stranded about 10 runners on base,” he said.
But that defeat was to be the only blemish on the Wolverines’ scorecard and they kept on winning all the way to the playoff round. Their next three victories came courtesy of the mercy rule, where a team has a lead of at least seven runs after the fifth inning.
The Wolverines ended up finishing high enough to qualify for the playoffs, which were held under the Page format. That means the first and second-place teams each have two chances to make it to the final. The Wolverines would meet Fort Saskatchewan again in the first quarter-final on Sunday morning and would win to advance directly to the final later in the afternoon.
Red Deer won the third versus fourth place game to advance to the semifinal against Fort Saskatchewan, which they would also win to move into the final.
Under normal circumstances, the Wolverines would have had home field advantage by virtue of being the higher-ranked team, but that wasn’t the case.
Skauge said he didn’t understand the decision at all, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
“We were told that if both teams were undefeated in the playoffs, it would go to a coin toss,” he said. “You can’t worry about that because it gave us a chance to get on the bats first and put the pressure on (Red Deer).”
And the pressure was firmly applied the first half of the game as the Wolverines built up a 7-0 lead by the fourth inning. Keira Coakwell, who was one of two Hay River pick-ups for the weekend, led the offensive output as she clubbed two inside-the-park home runs to help the cause.
But the Wolverines didn’t do themselves any favours as they allowed the Rage to slowly creep back into the contest and by the time the bottom of the seventh inning rolled around, it was 7-5. The Rage got one across in the inning to make it 7-6 and then had runners on first and second base with nobody out. But the standard strikeout, fly out, ground out all in a row was enough to close it out and give the Wolverines the win.
Catcher Erika Pollard was behind the plate for every pitch of every game and, needless to say, she was a hurting unit Monday morning.
But she said it was an excited and relieved group when the final out was made.
“We were so anxious trying to get that last out,” she said. “When it happened, we all kind of looked at each other and wondered what happened, and then just started screaming at each other.”
It was a very warm weekend, but perhaps more so for Pollard, who was wearing a full complement of a mask, chest protector and shin guards behind the plate.
“I was drenching my head in cold towels to stay cool,” she said.
In summing it all up, coach Stacey Lymer said she was so impressed with how the girls accorded themselves all weekend long.
“We trained for a while, but then Covid came and we couldn’t do anything,” she said. “It was such a great experience because it was the first time they had played against women and I am so proud of them. As a female coach, you want these girls to be role models for the players coming through and I can’t wait to see more girls playing and travelling to represent the NWT.”
Lymer was also full of praise for people behind the scenes who helped get the girls to this point.
“Jenn (Lukas) and Steve (Thomas) are so integral to this team,” she said. “They were the ones who really got girls softball back up and running in Yellowknife. Wendy (Malkin) led the fundraising for these girls for about three years and people like Greg stepped up to volunteer as coaches. So many people helped out and that’s why these girls were able to have that success.”
