Annual Canada Day tournament hits Brandon

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This article was published 28/06/2025 (319 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For those in Brandon’s baseball scene, the annual Triple Crown Canada Day Classic signals the official start of summer.

The tournament has become a staple in Brandon’s high-performance baseball scene and beyond, as the three-day event welcomes some of the top talent in the under-15 and U13 age groups from across the Prairies.

“It’s the biggest baseball tournament in Western Canada,” said Dustin Asham, Brandon’s high-performance director, meaning he oversees the operation of the AAA U18, U15 and U13 divisions.

“I remember as a kid, the last week of school would roll around and all we would talk about was who you were going to play that weekend,” said Asham.

He’s also heavily involved with this tournament, running it with his dad Faron, who started it when the younger Asham was early in his baseball career.

The tournament officially wraps up before the July 1 holiday that the staple is named after, simply because the stat holiday is a Tuesday this year. As such, it starts bright and early Saturday and welcomes the best under-15 and under-13 talent from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta for this year’s event.

“It’s the unofficial kick-off to summer. We’ve had teams come in from all over Canada over the years, and when you’re 13 years old and playing against a team like Okotoks that is coming off a national championship, you get pretty excited,” said Dustin.

A product of Brandon’s baseball scene himself, Dustin stays very busy and involved in the game, just not as a player these days.

Ten years after a pro career that took him to as far as Australia to play baseball, Dustin Asham is running the tournament along with his dad, much like they run the Triple Crown Sports facility and winter programming throughout the year.

The senior Asham actually started the tournament when Dustin was “a little kid” but the younger of the two — and recently a father himself — recalls seeing it in its earliest version, which only helped build the excitement he eventually not only played in but thrived in.

“When you’re used to playing locally then all of a sudden there’s a big jump at the U13 level and you’re playing the top teams from your province and other areas you get to see how you stack up against some of the other top talent in Western Canada,” said Dustin.

The tournament is the beginning of the unofficial second half of the season for all AAA teams. Now that school is done, all three programs will play with heightened intensity as they build toward provincials.

The U18 Marlins will play at Andrews Field today against the Winnipeg South Wolves before an actual Canada Day game, also at Andrews Field, against the South Central Cubs.

The U15 Marlins will open the weekend against South Central at at Simplot Millennium Park today at 12:30 p.m. The Marlins then play Pembina Hills and Carillon on Sunday and Yorkton and Midwest on Monday to conclude the 21-game schedule in that age bracket.

The side features seven teams in one pool, with the top team at the end of three days being named winner.

The U13 division has two pools of five, with each team playing a round-robin in their pool before a playoff round on Monday.

Brandon opens today against Oil Dome at 8 a.m. before playing a Western Canadian powerhouse program in the Okotoks Dawgs at 1 p.m. The Marlins then meet Pembina Hills and Carillon Sunday.

After the round-robin, the top seeds from each pool qualify for Monday’s playoffs, with the champion decided by the final at 3 p.m.

» mpackwood@brandonsun.com