INSIDE THE PARK: Softball complex set to shine at nationals

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/06/2023 (873 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Softball Manitoba executive director Don Klym is looking forward to Brandon becoming the centre of the provincial softball scene later this summer.

The Wheat City hosts the only Baseball Canada event coming to Manitoba this year when the under-15 girls take over the Ashley Neufeld Softball Complex from Aug. 9 to 13.

“The facility there has been great,” Klym said. “They’ve done a good job of it. We have 24 teams at that event with representation from every province in the country, and that really doesn’t happen very often.”

The breakdown is five teams from British Columbia, two from Alberta, three from Saskatchewan, four from Manitoba, four from Ontario, two from Nova Scotia and one each from Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland Labrador.

“The makeup is going to be great and I’m looking forward to a really strong, well-run championship, as Brandon’s always done,” Klym said. “It’s Lueber (Bruce Luebke) and the Neufelds (Bev and Phil), Brett Turner and all those other strong individuals out there who keep the Ashley Neufeld Softball Complex going.”

As it turned out, the addition of the Ashley Neufeld Softball Complex in 2017 proved to be providential.

Softball Manitoba had leased the John Blumberg Softball Complex in Headingley from the City of Winnipeg since 1990, but it was in rough shape due to years of drought and some diamonds were unplayable.

After a report showed the facility needed $3.2 million worth of upgrades the non-profit organization needed to finance, Softball Manitoba walked away from it in February.

“It deteriorated a little bit too much for us to be able to afford to keep it up,” Klym said. “We didn’t have $3.2 million in our back pocket but hopefully someone else can pick that up, and an individual buyer can help out with the city and bring that back to life.

“It was once one of the main complexes in North America but with 32 years behind it, it’s showing its age and unfortunately the city did not have the funding to keep it up to speed as far as safety and development out there.”

With the loss of the much-loved complex, that made the new facility in Brandon that much more important.

“Losing Blumberg, we take a bit of a hit with our provincial hosts, but we have anywhere from 10 to 15 venues across the province that pick up on our provincials,” Klym said. “Brandon is one of the top ones and we’re very, very happy to have it.”

The game is certainly in a good place these days.

Softball Manitoba was the only association in Canada to hold provincials in both 2020 and 2021, and didn’t suffer the devastating drop in registration that many sports faced.

“We had the opportunity to play within the public rules and guidelines and get through provincials in both of those to years in ’20 and ’21,” Klym said. “It didn’t affect us far as our competitions but it did affect us a bit with registration as well as umpire registration.

“But we sure rebounded.”

Indeed.

Softball Manitoba held its first provincial event of 2023 on the weekend and had 45 teams in the U11 A competition. He said it was the single largest provincial event in his 33 years at Softball Manitoba.

They have between 5,000 and 6,000 players registered this year, climbing every year by a few hundred recently. There are also more than 500 teams across the province.

But there are some concerns on the back burner.

One is umpires, which is a common refrain across the sports world. Softball Manitoba has an active umpire development committee — it includes a pair of Brandonites, education officer Luebke and travel co-ordinator Brad DeGraeve — and they have done a good job of recruiting.

So has cracking down on bad behaviour at the diamond.

“Zero tolerance has helped us a lot as far as keeping coaches and parents in line,” Klym said. “We’re really trying to get young kids. We need new blood in the game and it’s so tough to bring a kid back if he’s been harassed. It’s a tough sport to officiate but our numbers have been pretty solid as far as consistency and age range.”

Luebke and the Westman association have put a premium on mentorship, with more experienced umpires watching younger umps work, and offering a friendly face in the crowd along with some technical advice.

“It’s extremely important,” Klym said. “I know a lot of parents want to get their kids into ball but there is a son or daughter watching who says ‘Hey, I can get in behind the plate, behind the catcher and make some summer cash if I want and also move on as an official.’

“With the mentorship program, that’s very important, especially with our younger officials, just giving them the confidence and know-how to get behind the plate or on the bases and keep the rules intact.”

Manitoba hosted the Blue Convention in April, bringing in a few hundred umpires from coast to coast for three days for technical seminars by Softball Canada. The event takes place every third year, so it was a nice introduction to some of Manitoba’s newer game officials.

“To have our first-year umpires walk into something like that and take part in the junior component of the convention was outstanding,” Klym said.

Another worry is the state of the men’s game.

Manitoba once had a thriving men’s fastball scene, with senior men’s teams able to play in cash tournaments virtually every weekend, with an assortment of leagues for players to join. But those opportunities are largely gone now, with boys’ and men’s fastball mostly contained to northern communities.

At the same time, with provincial women’s baseball teams now attending nationals, some girls have been drawn away from softball to baseball.

“I’ve been fighting this fight,” Klym said. “I don’t know if it’s a fight but boys play baseball and girls play softball. That’s how it used to be but now Baseball Manitoba has a pretty good provincial program where they’re getting girls teams to go to nationals every year.

“We’re trying to do that with our boys. Canada Summer Games has a program for boys so that keeps us alive but the pocket is definitely up in Cross Lake. That’s the boys mine for fast-pitch development, along with Norway House.”

He said Peguis also has strong teams up to the men’s level, and they’ve had success in national and international events. This year the boys’ provincials will be held in Fisher River to ensure the inroads made in that area are maintained.

“It’s been a long tough journey for all of us but we’re not letting go of it,” Klym said. “… It’s still alive but it’s not as successful and popular as the girls’ game.”

An effort was made this spring to start another men’s fast-pitch league in Brandon — the latest of several attempts in the last 15 years — but it was unsuccessful.

But the girl’s game is thriving, with a recent change in rules having a dramatic impact.

While the best players are probably comparable to players from decades ago, there is a noticeable improvement further down the lineup.

Klym agrees, saying a move to firm provincial boundaries for AAA teams that were put into force a few years ago helped. The boundaries always existed for A ball, but the AAA use had a dramatic impact.

“We’ve got eight really good organizations and once we put up the fences and kept kids within their own backyard, that increased development and pride within your own community,” Klym said. “You weren’t losing players to other organizations, you kept your hometown players and it was worth developing them instead of developing them at a younger age … If you don’t have boundaries, the rich get richer but this has kept it down to in-house backyard development.

“You develop your A programs, your A programs develop your AA programs and those AA players feed your AAA programs.”

He said they are seeing a wider range of coaches working with players from the time they are 10 to 20, and that knowledge helps because they understand what needs to be worked on with each individual. That’s especially true in rural areas.

“We’ve seen the rural organizations rise up and now compete or even bypass the city organizations,” Klym said. “I credit that again to proper planning from our membership and our board.”

In other odds and ends:

• Manitoba’s 2013 Canada Summer Games team had 13 players, and nine of them eventually went from player to coach. As a result, the team is having a massive impact 10 years later.

“You don’t see that as much in men’s ball,” Klym said. “Men play forever and have no time to catch but the girls put in the time and then come up as mature coaches. I believe that’s just a better relationship with our younger athletes. They can relate a lot better to a female in their twenties or thirties as compared to a 50 or 60-year-old man out there with them.”

• There were a pair of softball academies in the province last winter, with one through Churchill High School in Winnipeg that had 24 athletes, plus the old Softball Canada academy that Softball Manitoba took over. It had 104 athletes involved for a 12-week program. In March, the organization took a U15 team down to Georgia in March and three teams down to Missouri in April.

• The organization is also closely tied with the Manitoba Softball Hall of Fame, which inducted seven individuals and three teams in May.

• The Manitoba Summer Games are next summer so the coaching staffs are being put in place. Six regions will be competing in softball.

• Manitoba will send both girls and boys teams to the 2025 Canada Summer Games, and those coaching applications will be released soon.

• The sole western Canadian championship in Manitoba this year will be the U17 girls playdowns in Winkler from Aug. 17 to 20. Two teams from B.C., two from Alberta, two from Saskatchewan and three from Manitoba will take part.