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Looking across the landscape that is the Carillon Sultans baseball teams, and while a few still have provincials to play, Co-President Louis Cote couldn't be more thrilled with how things went for all teams.
"It was a very exciting year, once again," Cote says with a smile. "Starting with community baseball, we have lot of kids involved again. Again, lots of quality coaches in community ball, which brought great experiences for kids across our region. It's nice to see the numbers climbing, and the number of communities that have thriving baseball programs that continue to grow."
A real positive is the number of kids involved, but communities having teams, to Cote, that's a major factor in kids sticking with the sport. "There's a correlation between the community having a ball team and those kids playing ball, because not everybody is going to travel to another community to play ball. Now that the majority in our regions have teams for the 9U, 11U, and 13U, that's a lot of kids in sport. This year, we had the most 15U teams that we've ever had, which shows those kids are staying involved."
On top of having so many teams, Cote says the talent level continues to rise and is spread out among the age groups. "It was a really good season, our level of baseball continues to climb every year. We've had really good ball for multiple years. This year, the AA programs really took off. They've been running for multiple years now, and this year, at 13U, we went with two even AA teams, where as every other league in the province would have one strong team, and those two teams competed against every other team in the province. One team went to the semifinal in provincials and the other was in the fifth place game. When you consider split squad, that proves there's a lot of talent on the rise and it will continue in the coming years."
None of what Carillon is able to do for kids would be possible without the coaches and managers that put in so much time, something Cote says is at the core of Carillon Minor Ball. "Honestly, that's where it starts, it's quality people coaching the teams. Let's use the 13U AA as an example, as a split squad, not too many people want to have a team that has half the talent that they could have, but coaches of those teams, Lawney Penner, Matt Banman, Colin Tetrault, Dave Blatz, Jason Sharpe, and Matt Plett, they all bought into it, and that's why the teams were successful, because of the philosophy those guys had and what they brought to the field as quality coaches."
Cote says they're always looking into the future, and he reflects back to where they were a few years ago, dreaming that they'd get to this point, and how that can help them moving forward. "It allows us to reflect, and if we go back in time, eight or ten years ago, we had a meeting where we looked at what we needed to do to be better as a region, to have better success at the provincial level. We put a strategic plan in place to develop more baseball players. Back in time, we had successful teams, but they were sort of one off's, it wasn't consistent year to year, now we're showing at 13U, 15U, 18U, and now the junior level where we have teams that are among the tops in the province. We've achieved that goal. I would say that if we can keep doing that, developing high end talent while still having the younger ages in each of the communities, we're on the right track."
So many young ball players look up at the older kids and want to be like them, and that's something Cote believes makes the program so special and meaningful to communities. "Well, I guess when you've been around as long as I have, I went to a Carillon Sultan Seniors game, and basically that whole team came through the Carillon minor system since I've been along, and other board members have been around. To see those guys playing ball when there was many years without a senior team, that's nice to see. You throw in the juniors success after winning their league championship, it's special to see people continuing the sport in later life. Makes you feel like you've done something well to develop the program along the way."
There's still a couple teams in action this upcoming weekend in their respective provincials, and if there's one thing about the Carillon program, they'll have a large support group behind them, cheering them on.