.JPG)
It was a great season for the U11 teams in Winkler, including the Dynamite who picked up bronze from the playdown tournament recently.
"We started off working on basic skills," explains coach Kerwin Froese. "Trying to figure out how our team gels together. Evaluating which positions work best for our team and evaluating how that looked. As we went throughout the season, we got a sense who can play where and who excels in different areas. Main thing for the team was having live pitching, it's a big change moving from a tee or soft toss. Their peers are pitching to them windmill style, it's a big adjustment as you come up in this age category. Hitting is a struggle early but as the year went on, some got really comfortable in the box, make some good hits and make some exciting plays."
As a team overall, Froese says they improved a lot. "Huge growth, you can see a huge growth from the start of the season to the end of the season. It's so fantastic to see as a coach."
Another major positive for Froese was watching the team come together as friends. "At the beginning of the year, there's one or two girls that maybe know each other, but as the team goes through struggles and ups and downs of sport, it really helps them grow through shared experiences. It was really good to see the bonding and gelling as the season went along. At the end of the season, we had a wind up, going out for ice cream and all the girls were at the same table, asking fantastic questions. One of the girls had everyone go around and share one thing they loved about their teammates. That's an incredibly mature thing to ask as a U11 age group. That's evidence of great friendships, bonding and sharing or complimenting each other."
Recently at playdowns, the Dynamite team battled not only other teams but also some uncontrollable situations on their way to bronze. "We had our big playdowns in Carberry, we had great weather the first day and great success. Our first two games we won and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. We had a lot of confidence going into the next day, but that next day the weather turned on us. It was cloudy, no sun, a little bit of rain toward the end of our game and it's so hard for pitchers to grip the ball and throw strikes when the rain affects the friction. It was a struggle and we lost our second day of ball that put us to b-side. The rest of the games got rained out. We had a funny situation where we were not able to play the rest of our games on the b-side, the diamond situation wasn't great, we were told they were not well enough to play. So, what we did was we agreed with the team we were facing that we'd meet in a neutral site location the next day, which took an incredible amount of hard work by the managers to get the details done, but we made it happen. We went to Carmen to play, which was a mutual location for the two teams we played against."
Through it all, Froese says the girls handled it with maturity and class, leading to success. "We won that game and that meant we could keep going. We ended up facing Rock Lake, playing in neutral ground again and we won that. The girls were so excited to win a bronze medal and finish the season on a high."
Softball in the Pembina Valley area continues to get stronger and Froese says it's an honour to represent their community. "At playdowns, there are so many teams celebrating female sports and seeing the growth and interest in it, it's special. For Winkler, we put out three teams representing our area. It's amazing to see the interest and growth in a sport that I really love. It's very important to keep these athletes in the programs, learning to play as a team and learning what happens when you have a heart felt loss or the joy of winning. It's not all about winning and losing, it's about team building and working with people, developing relationships, all those life lessons that will help as these girls grow older."
As Froese said, Winkler had three teams do very well and they'll be focused on coming up on Monday and Tuesday on Pembina Valley Online.