A season to remember for Oakville A’s U11 baseball team

OAKVILLE, Ontario — For teams playing in the Ontario Baseball Association (OBA), the past baseball season was certainly different and for one Oakville A’s team, unforgettable.

With outdoor organized sports shut down until June 11, now all baseball teams in Ontario were two months behind compared to a regular season.  For the Oakville A’s 11U A team, it meant that they had missed practices and key development time.  Since the team is made up of players from all over Oakville, they didn’t get to see each other during the shutdown either. Getting back on the field in June, compressed the training and really challenged the players to get up to speed quickly as games were only three weeks away.  Once games started in July, the players’ second home became the Glen Abbey field, and the amount of time they spent together increased, sometimes having 2 practices and 3 games in the same week.  The boys loved it and over the month of July, the team of 12 became closer and made each other better.

August rolled around and the OBA started their month-long provincial championship, which was unique for this year.  Instead of a weekend tournament for teams that qualified, all teams in Ontario could enter and they would be grouped in brackets for double round-robin play.  Top teams in each bracket would then move on to the championship bracket.  While not all teams in Ontario decided to enter, the ones that did were ready to compete.

In the first round, Oakville faced Kawartha, Martingrove and Mississauga.  All the teams were skilled and every game was a battle for a win.  Oakville managed to make it out first round along with Kawartha, with who they split the series.  In the second round, Oakville was able to step up their play to a higher level and won their first four games against Halton Hills and St. Catherines.

That left only Kawartha to play on the Labour Day weekend.  One win and Oakville would take the provincial championship.  In the first game, Oakville’s starting pitcher made life difficult for the Kawartha batters while Oakville came out swinging at the plate.  Going into the 7th inning, Oakville was ahead 9 to 5 and only needed 3 outs for the championship.  Their closer (relief pitcher) made sure Kawartha didn’t get a chance to come back and finished the game with a strikeout to win the 11U A Ontario Provincial Championship.

After both games were done, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, Kawartha and Oakville had pizza together, played whiffle ball and got to talk to each other off the field.  On the field, the teams played to win but after the games they were friends.

The Oakville players really came together as a team.  They worked hard at practice, competed at each game, supported each other and met new people from around the province.  It really was an unforgettable season.

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