The Carnduff Southeast Steelers softball team have captured their third Western Canadian championship in 14 years.
The Steelers beat the Calgary Red Sox 7-0 in the title game of the Senior B Open Women's Fastpitch Tournament at Exhibition Park in Abbotsford, B.C., on Aug. 21 to win the championship. The Steelers' Jana Sittler pitched a complete game four-inning shutout for the victory.
“We knew what we had to do to beat them and went there with the mindset of doing just that,” said Allan Hubbard, coach of the Steelers. “We hit the ball hard and caused a couple of errors on them and then we scored a couple of runs and it just led on from there. They just couldn't hit our pitching.”
The Steelers began the seven-team tournament with a 2-1 win over B.C.'s Delta Sunfire on Thursday morning before besting Alberta's Strathmore Magic 9-0 a few hours later and Victoria's Strawberry Vale 9-1 that evening. Led by Lydia Niemeggers, who notched a batting average of .533 during the round robin, the club started Friday morning with a 4-0 win over the Victoria Aces before knocking around the Saskatoon Synergy 8-1 that afternoon. The Steelers' only blemish of the tournament came in their final round-robin game on Saturday morning when they fell 4-0 to the Red Sox.
The 5-1 round-robin record set the Steelers up for a rematch with the Red Sox in the one-versus-two game, which the Carnduff team won 5-1 placing them in the final against the winner of the Red Sox and Aces bronze-medal game.
Hubbard said the Steelers qualified for the Western Canadian championships courtesy of their provincial final win over the Saskatoon Synergy on July 17 in Saskatoon. He said the club does not compete in a regular league and its roster is comprised of women from other teams who come back to Carnduff to play for the Steelers.
“The girls who are on this team are dedicated,” said Hubbard, noting players on the team hail from different towns across the southeast. “They like to join this tournament team and go on to bigger challenges for them because they're interested in good competitive ball.”
The 2016 Western Canadian championship was the second title the Steelers have captured in Abbotsford having also won in the B.C. city in 2012. The team's first title came in 2002 when they won as the host team of the Western Canadian championships.
“We've represented Saskatchewan numerous times,” said Hubbard. “Since 1998, there has only been a few years, two or three years, that we haven't went on either as the first-place or second-place team out of Saskatchewan.”
