Magical weekend in Strathmore

Times Contributor  

 

The Strathmore Magic played some hard games this past weekend at the 2012 Senior B Women’s Fast Pitch Provincial Championship. 

“We ended up in fourth, we lost out in the semi final round,” said coach Jim Sonhurst. “They played their hearts out and now they know what they have to do in Senior B Ball.”  

The Magic played well, despite being plagued with injuries. 

“When you’ve got as many walking wounded as we had we were happy we got that far,” said Songhurst. The level of play was high, the Magic lost on Friday to the Red Deer Panthers and the Edmonton Warriors. They then had success on Saturday winning against the Calgary Hawks, Canadian Extreme from Edmonton and the Calgary Redsocks to get to fourth place. The Red Deer Panthers won first place, the Edmonton Warriors claimed second and Calgary Hawks got third. The magic played their best games Saturday, especially against the Calgary Hawks. 

“The Calgary Hawks and the Strathmore Magic have always had real competitive games against each other, neither team likes to lose to the other so that was a good competitive game,” said Sonhurst.

Hosting the tournament again was fun for the team and they didn’t have to worry too much about organization because they have hosted so many times before. 

“We took part with the Calgary ladies league… we’ve done it before so many times that it was old habit to us and we just did everything the same as we usually do,” said Sonhurst. “(We) just had a good time, quite a few people showed up and it was a good weekend.”

Unfortunately, with their fourth place finish the Magic didn’t make the Western Championships this year, but Sonhurst says it’s all a learning experience. 

“The girls are a little upset that they aren’t going to BC but for some of them this is the first year out of four or five that they haven’t gone on to the westerns,” said Sonhurst “we just moved up from junior and we’ve been to the westerns enough times, in one way it’s a break in the other way it’s a learning factor and we learned a lot from it.” Not competing in the Western Championship hasn’t stopped the Magic though, they played in a tournament this week. 

“We are in the city playdowns …we’re tied 1 and 1 and it’s a best out of three series, winner take all tonight (July 24). If we win tonight we play right back to back against the Calgary Red Socks,” said Sonhurst. Those results were not available as of press time.