UNITY – The town of Unity increased in population for the Unity Panthers softball tournament over the weekend of June 14, 15 and 16.
The Panthers teams that played host to the tournament included the U11, U13, U15, U17 and U19 girls, welcoming an additional 24 teams from Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Organizer, Dean Wildeman, said the weekend long event started at 8 a.m. on the Friday however Mother Nature dampened the excitement on Sunday with heavy rains.
“As much as the girls wanted to play the whole weekend, there were only eight games that were not played due to the weather,” he added.
At the end of day on the Saturday, the win loss standings were 1-2 for U19, 2-2 for U17, 1-3 for U15, 2-1 for U13 and 0-4 for the U11 team.
“The U11 team had new coaches this year and a lot of new players. They still had a lot of fun and got to experience a tournament,” said Wildeman.
Although you could hear the cheers and applause throughout the community, it was the echoes of comments on how smoothly everything went that can still be heard to this day.
Brian Deck was the senior umpire for the event, with a team of officials from Kindersley, Provost, Luseland, Plenty, Major and Unity. Many of the officials had worked with each other at other events in the past and worked together to ensure each game was covered.
“The ball diamonds in Unity are the best in the world in my books,” said Deck.
The ground crew also went unnoticed over the weekend. With 56 games played over the two days, each diamond was prepped and ready for the next game in a mere six minutes.
“Watching the ground crew working was amazing. They were well orchestrated in what needed to be done and completed the job in almost record time,” added Wildeman.
With such a successful turn out of teams and volunteers, Wildeman is excited to see how next year's event will go.
