100 Mile House’s baseball diamonds will be packed during the South Cariboo Softball Association’s season this year.
Last week the association held its first round of practices for its teams ranging from U5 to U14. Angie Anderlini, the association’s president, said they have close to 160 players signed up this year and are starting to run out of space to hold practices.
“We are actually running out of diamond space because we have more teams in every age category, in U11 and U13 especially,” Anderlini said. “We’re trying to figure out space alternatives for diamond use. Our numbers are about the same but we’ve seen more interest in the older groups. We have a lot of new players in U11 and U13.”
Those 160 players are divided into 15 teams consisting of one U5 team, two U7 teams, three U9 teams, three U11 teams, three U13 teams, one U15 team and one U17 team. They’ll be practising their skills for the next three weeks before games begin near the end of the month. Anderlini said the season lasts until the third week of June.
Growing up Anderlini said she also used to play softball down on the coast, which is why when her own children became old enough to play she joined the association. She remarked some of her fondest memories come from the baseball diamond and she wants to facilitate that now for today’s youths.
“It’s kind of neat networking with other associations,” Anderlini said. “This year we’ve kind of started up some league play between us, Clearwater, Barriere, Kamloops, Cache Creek and Merritt. Teams will be travelling here and our teams will be travelling to those towns and cities for games.”
Anderlini said it’s been a while since any form of interleague play at the softball level has occurred. She added that both she and the players from U11, U13 and U15 are all eager to play against teams from across the Interior rather than just one another.
“A lot more players this year expressed this year they wanted to travel to play ball so that makes it kind of exciting the league play was offered as well,” Anderlini said. “It’d be nice if it could continue if it all works out.”
100 Mile House won’t be hosting any tournaments this year but Anderlini noted several of their teams will be travelling out of town to do so. This will include their U13 girls team competing in regionals in Penticton on June 22 to 23 and their U13, U15 and U17 teams attending provincials in Merritt from July 12 to 14.
While most of the teams are full now, Anderlini said they still welcome any latecomers in the U9, U13 girls and U17 age categories to sign up via the South Cariboo Minor Softball’s Facebook page.
