Hartman rides hard work to provincial award

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This article was published 28/11/2023 (714 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What Brooke Hartman lacks in experience, she more than makes up for in determination.

The 11-year-old Grade 6 student was named Softball Manitoba’s under-11 AA player of the year on the weekend in just her second year in the sport.

“When I was not the greatest player, I found out about this team called Magic, a AAA team, and I was like ‘Oh, I really want to play for that team,’” Hartman said. “So me and my dad (Adam) kept practising. One time he didn’t even tell me about practising, he just picked me up from school and told me to get my cleats on, we’re going to go practice.

“I was at the diamond almost 24-7.”

Once she decided she was going to get good at the game, she also began to watch her father more closely at his Andrew Agencies Senior AA Baseball League games. (Adam is a seemingly ageless starting pitcher for the RFNOW Cardinals.)

Brooke, who throws and bats from the right, would bring a friend to her dad’s games and they would hit in the batting cage as he played, pausing to watch her dad on the mound or when he was hitting.

Plus, when the Toronto Blue Jays were on television, she watched as often as she could.

It certainly paid off on the diamond.

Hartman played on three teams this summer, starting in Softball Brandon’s house league with a team she went to A provincials with, then participating in the ponytail league for players who wanted to extend their seasons, and attending the AA provincials with the Brandon Heat.

She pitched a lot, while also playing a pair of key positions in shortstop and first base. But it was at the plate where the youngster really shone. She hit the hide off the ball in house league, batting .900 and clubbing 24 home runs.

Hartman’s house league team, the Cardinals, went 13-1-1 and was top seeded of the eight clubs from Brandon going to A provincials in Buhler from June 23 to 25. At the 45-team event, the team went 6-0 in the round-robin but fell in extra innings to the eventual provincial champions from Winkler in the semifinals.

The Heat then fell to Steinbach, who they had beaten in the round-robin, in the bronze-medal game.

Hartman homered in the semifinal and combined with Logan Rome to throw a no-hitter in another game.

“It’s very exciting,” Hartman said of the experience. “The teams there are some of the best … Being able to get to fourth place out of 45 teams was just awesome. At provincials, there are going to be teams you’ve never seen before. In Brandon, you might know other teams but there you get to play other teams you haven’t played before. You get to see other players and be prepared for next season.”

Hartman went 14-for-18 at the plate for a .778 average with six home runs while giving up just eight runs in 22 innings pitched.

The AA provincials were in Carman from July 21 to 23, and Brandon sent two Heat teams with another coming from south of the city. That meant three clubs attended from the Magic catchment area, while other regions sent just one.

Brooke’s team finished fourth of the seven teams — the Westman South Storm lost to the Interlake Phillies in the gold medal game — but she was named the Heat’s top player after batting 13-for-16 with six more homers. She totalled a whopping 24 homers on the year.

Incredibly, she only turned 11 in mid-September, which means she was 10 for the entire softball season.

A lot of her success can be traced to the benefits of hard work.

She didn’t pitch well in her rookie season, so she took some specialized instruction to learn the fundamentals.

“When I was pitching, I was very slow and I was very wild,” Hartman said. “I would throw half them up in the air on my house league team last year. I wasn’t that good, but I wanted to be a pitcher like my dad so he taught me how to pitch. We tried a lot of pitching drills and we started working a lot on that and going to clinics and they helped a lot.

“I keep practising. I practise in my basement with my hitting and pitching.”

She does a warmup at home and then begins to throw harder. The fact she’s in the house helps with her control.

“If I’m wild, I’ll break the roof,” Hartman said with a laugh.

Her extra effort paid off in an unexpected way in mid-October. Softball Manitoba emailed Brooke’s mother Kerry and she called the youngster to let her know the news.

“When I found out I was bouncing off the walls in excitement,” Hartman said.

The family went in for the ceremony in Winnipeg on the weekend, and Brooke was able to accept the award in person.

“It was awesome,” Hartman said. “When they were talking about my season, it felt so great. I was so excited and ready to get up there and show everybody who I was. Everyone was clapping after: It was awesome. It was one of the best experiences ever.”

The only other Westman player to earn a provincial honour was Danika Nell of Boissevain, who was named the U19 AAA player with the Smitty’s Terminators in Winnipeg.

The other top female players were:

• U13 A — Aribella McGregor

• U13 AAA — Jersey MacMillan

• U15 A — Hailey Fraser

• U15 AAA — Chloe Carriere (St. Pierre, Eastman).

• U17 A — Sydney Turenne

• U17 AAA — Pascale Kihn (La Broquerie, Eastman)

• U19 A — Charity Dupuis

Along with her dad, Hartman said she was grateful to her assistant coaches on her teams, Steve McMillan, Aaron Rome and Jasmine Horwood in house league, Kyle Furkalo and Heidi Figol on the Heat and Kristen Phillips and Mark Ryback in the ponytail league.

But it doesn’t sound like it takes much coaching to get the youngster motivated.

“I like everything about the game,” Hartman said. “I love hitting. It’s my comfort zone in the game. I love the team part because your teammates are so awesome and cheer you on, even if you’re not having a great game. They’re always there for you. Everything about the game is great. I can’t say one bad thing about it.”

She also figure skates and is a terrific basketball player, which runs in the family since Adam suited up with the Brandon University Bobcats. The five-foot-four Hartman played on a U14 club basketball team last winter at age 10.

She already has a good sense of the challenge that lies ahead next summer in her softball career. Since tryouts for the Magic programs are often held in September to give the players a chance to train together over the winter, Hartman has already secured a spot on the 2024 U13 AAA squad.

It’s been quite a year for Hartman, who went from a “not the greatest player” to the top player in the province in her age group while attending two provincials and then earning a spot with the Magic next season.

And it all came at age 10 and in the couple months after turning 11.

“It felt awesome,” Hartman said. “Me and my dad had to practise a lot to get there though.

“It proves that if you’re working hard, you can get to wherever you want to be. If your skill is low and you practise a ton and put in the work, you’ll be a better player.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

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