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It was a magical run for the U13 Winkler Storm as they blew away the competition at their most recent tournament, winning a total of seven games before dispatching Hamiota in the finals to take home the gold.
"We're made up of girls from our two Winkler teams," head coach Dan Giesbrecht explains. "We have tryouts for provincials for those girls that want to try out. We pick our team, then we practice sometimes during the season, and we entered one tournament in Steinbach. After our league playdowns are done, we focus and we enter the provincials."
For many, there's a built in relationship as teammates but Giesbrecht says they have some history. "They would have all played together over the years and some of them are returning from our 2023 U11 provincial championship, as well."
Coaching this group with several players having been champions before, Giesbrecht says that leadership goes a long way. "It's huge. They know what to expect and having coached them before, it's really good. We have some younger players, too. It's great to give them experience and for them to play on a provincial team from Winkler, it's a huge honour for them. It's a great experience for them to learn many aspects of life in general."
The talent is unquestioned and Giesbrecht believes it's the complete buy in from everyone that makes them successful. "They're a very adaptable group," he says proudly. "We have a meeting right off the bat, and we talk about team first and checking egos at the door. Someone might have never played left field before, but we play to our strengths and we do what's best as a unit to be successful. Everyone has a real positive attitude and that's huge for us."
The most recent event in Winnipeg featured some really good teams, but Giesbrecht says he believed this group could make some noise. "They came in with a lot of experience, they played last year and some of them were maybe not as successful as they would have liked, but they came in ready to do the job. We practiced, they did their jobs and we set goals, our first step was to play as great as we possibly can. We knew they were skilled and as we went along, we wanted to make the playoffs, if we could make playoffs, you never know what can happen from there."
Friday night started things off on the right foot, winning both games they played 9-2 and 12-8. Giesbreacht says there was a feeling that this could be a special run. "It was hot," he says with a laugh. "That didn't distract us though, but we talked about it, we didn't want things like that to distract us. You could see other teams with heavy shoulders, sweating, but we just pushed through, we battled. That was what our team was known for, we battled and competed, making us successful."
As the group marched to the finals, the piled up the wins Saturday through to Sunday, winning 15-4, 14-3. 8-1, 14-7 and 13-6 on their way to the finals. "We have some great players who would do whatever it took to get on base," Giesbrecht says proudly. "You can get a walk, many of our players got hit, and they'd just shake it off, they'd just run to first. Once we got on the bases, that was our strength for sure. We are fast and aggressive. If you get on base, there's a great chance we'll steal, steal and then we will either hit you home or we'll take home as well. We're very aggressive on the bases and that's a huge strength of our team."
Heading into that final game, despite all they did leading up, the U13 Winkler Storm were underdogs, at least in the minds of others. "We were excited, the girls were pumped," Giesbrecht says with an excited tone of voice. "There were maybe some nerves because Hamiota also had a really good tournament, and all we heard was Hamiota, Hamiota, but we told our girls not to worry about it. We have great pitching and while they had a really good first pitcher, it was tied 1-1 after 3, they put their new pitcher in and we exploded for six runs. We just shut them down from there. We celebrated after shutting down that last at bat, it was special."
Seeing the elated group celebrating together meant a lot to Giesbrecht, knowing how hard the team worked to get to that point. "It was so exciting and it's great to see the hard work pay off. These girls are dedicated, they worked hard, they knew their jobs and they never quit. Always positive and a very unique group of girls, they're fun and at times a little goofy, but they were able to focus when they needed to focus and that really helped us. We had great pitching, a couple girls pitched a lot of innings and when we needed to get baserunners on, we did and we'd score them almost every time."
The community around the team was also very special and Giesbrecht says they played a role in the success. "We had a couple parents running an app, GameChanger, there's other stuff going on so it allowed other family members to track what we were doing. Winkler Minor Ball also does an amazing job, they help get us extra time on the diamonds and you can see that extra time pay off. Other teams don't get that, and it shows in our game."
Looking down the road, the future for many of these players is very bright. "We have a bunch of majors going on to U15 next year, that will really help that team out. Only a couple minors were on the team this year, but it was like that last year when we won the bronze at U11, so we'll get some majors from U11 and we'll always be competitive. Whether we can get into the playoffs, we'll see what happens. You never know what's going to happen, there are so many variables that happen when there's four games in day. You never know what's going to happen."
While you never know what's going to happen, there are a few things that are for sure, that the Winkler Storm are going to be competitive and there's going to be many smiles, laughs and memories made that last a life time.