Highgate Jr. Rock Win Bronze at Ontario Summer Games
Front Row (L-R) – Connor Sloan, Chris Simpson (coach), Connor Hines, Riley Clark, Owen Woodley, Colton Tremblay Back Row (L-R) – Scott Hines (coach), Noah Woodley, Blake Palmer, Josh Simpson, Paul Sloan (coach), Gareth Tobias, Joe Betterley, Chris Sloan (coach), Garrett Whiteye Absent: Noah Fraser
On August 11th – 14th, the Highgate Jr. Rock Bantam Fastpitch (U16) boys competed in the Ontario Summer Games, this year hosted by Mississauga.
Seven ORSA teams from Western Ontario vied for the three medal positions, four of the teams qualifying for the Games were from our local Four Counties League.
The 4-1 Highgate team found themselves playing Oil Springs in the semi-final game Sunday afternoon, having previously defeated Baden (8-4) and Glencoe (7-2) in back to back games Sunday morning.
Following the double knock-out format, their next loss would be their last game of the tournament. By defeating Glencoe they had already secured a bronze medal, and a win against Oil Springs would vault them into the gold medal game.
A tight game defensively, the score was 2-1 for Oil Springs after 5 innings, and with 2 innings remaining it was anybody’s game (7 inning games in Fastpitch). Unfortunately, Oil Springs plated 5 runners in the 6th and Highgate could only respond with 2. After a clean 7th Oil Springs advanced to the gold medal game against Dutton with a 7-3 victory.
All three medalists were from the local Four Counties League. To win gold Highgate would have had to win 5 games back to back on Sunday, which was a pretty tall order. On Friday the Jr. Rock defeated Norwich/Otterville 12-2, and lost to Dutton 2-10, while on Saturday they defeated Glencoe 19-2 before the rains shut down the tournament for the rest of the day.
Congratulations team!