The Whitecourt Minor Baseball Association hosted the St. Albert Cardinals, Edmonton Angels, and Parkland Twins for a U11 AA tournament at Graham Acres Field over the May 4-5 weekend.
Tournament organizer Rhonda McKinnon says this was the first time the U11 AA team has hosted a tournament.
“Any of the teams that are playing in that league have the option of hosting a weekend event called a Host Weekend,” McKinnon explains. “They structure the weekend like a tournament style, it’s a four-team round-robin where each team will play three games over the course of a weekend. Last year was our first year [as a team] so we chose not to host.”
McKinnon says it was good to see family members of players come down to Graham Acres Fields to support the young athletes.
“We had friends and family of the players that travelled to play come and watch, we also had local friends and family members that came down to watch and support their Whitecourt Royals which was super awesome. I think it would be safe to say we had 150 people down there at any given time.”
The Whitecourt Royals finished the weekend with two wins and one loss.
On Saturday, May 4, the Royals defeated the Parkland Twins 20-10.
On Sunday, May 5, the Royals lost to the Edmonton Angels 17-16 and defeated the St. Albert Cardinals 14-13.
McKinnon expressed gratitude to all the umpires, volunteers, and organizers who made this weekend possible.
“What made this tournament a success is our parent volunteers,” says McKinnon. “The whole weekend is run by the U11 parents who are volunteering for all the duties that need to be done. Right down to emptying garbage cans each day, to the groundskeeping, chalking the lines, scorekeeping, pitch-counting absolutely everything is done by parent volunteers. Without that, you can’t have a successful host weekend.”
“The second thing that made this a success would be the support we have from the Whitecourt Minor Baseball Association as a whole. The president, Chelsey Rowswell, has been very supportive of the AA program. She coordinated a list of volunteers to come down and run a concession so that people could be fed right at the diamond and didn’t have the leave there if they were playing back-to-back, that was a huge benefit.”
McKinnon also took the opportunity to thank the Umpire crew and the Sponsors who supported the event.
“Thank you to our Umpire in Chief and Co-Chief and all of the umpires that umped the games as well as our sponsors for our team overall.”
With the success of this tournament and the overwhelming support shown for the AA program, McKinnon says hosting these tournaments may become a regular occurrence.
“It was overall a very, very successful weekend, and our parent group has already talked and we look forward to hosting again.”