U15 Magic swinging big sticks

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This article was published 21/06/2025 (322 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If a hockey game ever breaks out at Ashley Neufeld Softball Complex, under-15 AAA Westman Magic head coach Jill Twordik has quite a lineup.

Of the 12 players on her softball team, 10 played AAA hockey last winter, bucking the trend to increased specialization in a single sport. Twordik, who is a firm believer in the multi-sport approach, said it’s easy to find the positives.

“The girls live very busy lives,” Twordik said. “Even the ones who aren’t playing hockey might be playing volleyball. It’s a very athletic group and I think we saw we maybe weren’t as polished when we came out in the beginning, which is exactly where I expected us to be. Now we’re starting to put our team together and play as I expect.

“The girls are athletes but they endure a lot of activities through their weeks so there were a lot of tired weeks but they’re great at balancing things and they love it, and I think they’re better ball players for it. They appreciate each other’s schedules, and we all respect and understand there is a place for everything.”

Incredibly, eight of the girls are in Hockey Manitoba’s top-68 Program of Excellence program this weekend, forcing the Magic to postpone their games.

The Magic is comprised of Brandon’s Rachel Lyver, Kasia Baranyk, Quinn Twordik and Olivia Wilson, Virden’s Hadley Robertson, Zaree Routledge and Georgia Koop, Oak Lake’s McKenzie Masson and Rose Cochrane, Wawanesa’s Ivy Fry, Chater’s Callie Franklin and Deloraine’s Lily Wells.

The team has five returning majors — Franklin, Baranyk, Fry, Twordik and Lyver — plus three major newcomers in Cochrane, Masson and Wilson who played AA last season.

They have four minors, Robertson, Wells, Koop and Routledge. In league play, the Magic are 7-3, good for third in the seven-team league behind the unbeaten Eastman Wildcats (14-0) and Central Energy (11-0).

They have scored 92 runs and surrendered 61, a +31 differential that also is third best. The Wildcats lead that statistical category with a 135-run differential (157-22), with Central close behind at 108 (137-29).

“I’m really happy,” Twordik said. “Our league doesn’t have a league tournament, so I really like to use league games to play girls in different positions and get them in different situations that they maybe don’t get into in tournaments where I might go to a shorter bench at times at the end. That doesn’t happen in league play, so it gives us lots of opportunities to put girls in every situation.

“I don’t get too worried about how we’re doing in league in terms of wins and losses. It’s just how we’re playing as a team so I’m pleased.”

Westman hasn’t met Central yet this season, so they have four games with them and a season-ending doubleheader against Eastman on July 19 as they complete their 24-game schedule.

U15 provincials are at Winnipeg’s Ray Fennel Park from July 24 to 27, and they will determine who heads to western Canadians in Calgary from Aug. 1 to 4, and nationals in Winkler from Aug. 13 to 17.

A quirk of the Manitoba Premier Softball League schedule is the tournament break. The Magic didn’t have a league game between May 19 and June 11, and they only had the latter because they were rained out on May 17 and were making up the games.

They next see MPSL action on Wednesday in Portage la Prairie, but the Magic have been busy in the meantime, playing in the three tournaments. In Saskatoon, they lost in the semifinals while in their own Wheat City Classic they were scheduled to play in the bronze-medal game but it was rained out. Last weekend in Melfort, they lost in the final.

Twordik said it can be tricky to find events to compete in, especially since there aren’t many in Manitoba in May because the weather is so hit and miss. They also had to push back tournament play because high school teams were still active.

“The girls have been playing a lot of ball,” Twordik said. “Maybe we’re not playing together and playing as a team but the girls individually were all playing a lot for their high-school teams.

“We maybe haven’t had our league play but we’ve played a lot of games.”

They’ll certainly make up for some lost outings when they resume play, with six games in five days between June 27 and July 1.

Twordik has four pitchers on her staff, Franklin, Robertson, Masson and her daughter Quinn. Lyver does about 80 per cent of the catching, with Cochrane doing the other 20 per cent.

“We’ll be there with pitching,” Twordik said. “We have girls who are pretty good with the mental side of the game. They can throw really well for us, especially in hard situations. The thing about moving up into U15 is we’re seeing better hitters so as much as you can throw well, we need to have multiple pitches to be able to throw to girls.

“I would say we have some pitch depth in some of our girls and some of them are working on pitch depth.”

Three of the four pitchers threw for their high-school teams, and the pitching distance in that game is three feet longer — 43 feet versus 40 in U15 — so Twordik said that also helped them.

Twordik, who has her husband Brad and Brooklyn Franklin as assistant coaches, said the team defence is usually able to help out the pitching.

“Defensively we’ve played well,” Twordik said. “We have a bit of work to do. I like to have a pretty sharp defence. We work very hard on defence in the off-season as well as in the new part of the season when we can get on the diamond.

“I haven’t seen us quite as sharp as I want to so we’re still working on a few of those game situations and trying to gel things together so we know exactly where the ball needs to go and we’re not hanging into it. We’re coming along. I’m happy with where we are at this point in the season.”

Meanwhile, the Magic have shown marked improvement at the plate. Twordik said she especially noticed the bats coming to life in recent weekends.

“Offensively we’ve actually come on pretty strong,” Twordik said. “We started flat but going to the tournament in Saskatoon really started to light a fire for the girls, and we went from Saskatoon to our Wheat City Classic and from the Wheat City Classic to Melfort, so that was three tournaments in a row and we hit very, very well, especially in Melfort. I’m really pleased with how our hitting is coming.”

That includes the long ball.

Twordik has seen a few home runs from her group this season, which is somewhat out of character for them.

“That’s kind of new for our team,” Twordik said. “We were never really over-the-fence hitters so we’ve definitely got some power swings from some girls. Our first five or six girls in the lineup can all put the ball very deep so we’ve had lots of doubles but lots of great singles. “We’re going for just moving girls around and getting power out of some of those majors that we didn’t see last year as minors.”

Twordik said her approach on the base paths is usually aggressive, and since 10 of the 12 girls have played for her before, they understand what she likes to do.

But at the same time, by U15 there are some catchers with cannons.

“We can’t be aggressive as we once were,” Twordik said. “You have to respect the arm behind the plate but we’ve done well. We have a real great team of athletes who are actually quite quick on the paths. I hope to get a little more aggressive as the season goes on.”

Twordik’s hope is that her club of hockey players is saving its best for the third period of their softball season, with the big games all ahead of them. If that’s the case, she’s optimistic they can make some noise at provincials.

“I think we can be real good,” Twordik said. “We are very athletic and we’re taking our team getting there a little bit and I’m happy about that. We don’t need to be peaking right now. We’re putting a lot of games under our belts right now and getting in a lot of game situations and getting our heads around tournament play, just like we do in provincials. I’m really pleased with how we’re doing.

“I would love to see us back in the final again. We have been fortunate enough in the years I’ve been coaching to be in the final every year in provincials so I would like to see us back there again.”

pbergson@brandonsun.com