Slow-pitch is proving to be so popular in Grand Forks there was a clamour for spots for this year’s annual tournament.
In the end, 20 teams met on the baseball diamonds for three days of play, with the final game coming down to hometeam Brew Jays and West Kootenay conglomerate team Stingers, with the latter taking the top spot in a 14-2 blowout on Sunday afternoon.
The emphasis was on having fun, but for the Stingers, this was a big relief after nearly six years of play in the tournament without winning.
“This is a big monkey off of our backs,” said team member Steve Mota. “We fought hard and it shows, but the Brew Jays made us work for it.”
It was also an exciting game for all, he added, with a lot of diving and crashing for the ball in the outfield.
On the need to keep it to 20 teams, there could’ve been around 30 teams this year, said Tom Starchuk, one of the organizers and Brew Jays team member. However, lack of accommodations, infrastructure for night games and manpower to host that many teams meant they had to cap it at 20.
“I had to pare it down, but we had more than 20 teams,” he said, “The problem with Grand Forks right now is we lack the facilities to host a big tournament. “Hopefully we can get some funding with the city, or something else, we can either build a bigger park, or get lighting for night games so we can expand this even more.”
The makeup of the teams was six from Grand Forks and 14 from across the Kootenays and Interior.
While it was all about fun and the love of the game, it’s also a charity tournament, said Starchuck, with proceeds going towards upkeep of the baseball diamonds and eventually, night lighting.
The tournament has its roots in another leisure sport Starchuk and a few fellow slo-pitch players enjoy: tubing and drinking. It was during one session of this in 2015 hey realized there was no slo-pitch tournament in Grand Forks.
“We decided to have one and three weeks later we started it with eight teams,” he said. “We grew over the years to 20 and we had so many asking to join this year we started a waiting list. We’re working on making it bigger, but we need some things like night lighting to have games past sunset.”
Also this year, the Slo-pitch teams partnered with Boundary Youth Baseball to have them fundraise by running the concession.
