It was a bittersweet summer for Prince George ball player Amanda Asay.
The 24-year-old athlete spent much of the the summer in the Edmonton area where she won a silver medal at the Senior Women's Invitational Baseball championship with Team B.C., before capturing the bronze with Team Canada at the 2012 Women's Baseball World Challenge.
"I can't lie -- both of them are a little bit disappointing," said the 2006 graduate of College Heights secondary school. "But I'm happy to medal in both of them. I was actually a little more surprised at nationals - I think it was a big step up for B.C."
In Spruce Grove, Alta., Team B.C. finished with a 5-2 record, losing to Ontario 11-0 in the gold-medal game.
"You're never too happy when you lose the gold medal game but... we just ran out of pitching and Ontario were a lot deeper than us," said Asay.
Team B.C. opened the July 25-28 tournament with a 6-4 win over Ontario.
Asay, who played for Team Alberta in the past when B.C. didn't field a senior women's team, said winning the silver was an improvement for the B.C. women after they, without Asay, finished fourth at the previous national championship.
As for her personal game, Asay said she had no complaints about how she contributed at nationals playing both catcher and pitcher for B.C.
"I felt like I was seeing the ball pretty well," she said. "I was pretty happy with my defensive game."
After nationals Asay joined Team Canada for the World Challenge, held at Telus Field, Aug. 10-19 where she helped Canada beat Australia 17-13 in the bronze-medal game. Japan won gold with a 3-0 win over the United States.
"We beat the U.S. during the round robin and just lost to Japan by two runs," said Asay about Canada's 15-9 win and 9-7 loss. "We didn't go right after [Japan] in the round robin and we were hoping we'd get another shot at them but we didn't."
Canada lost its shot at facing Japan again when they fell 17-4 to the U.S. in the semifinal.
Asay will head to Vancouver on Tuesday where she's working on a master's degree in forestry at UBC. But for the first time in her post-secondary career, Asay won't have a team schedule to keep her grounded.
"Next year I'll just be a student," she said. "I think it's going to feel weird to have more time and less structure in my day. Hopefully I'll figure it out but it's definitely going to be a lot different."
Asay spent two seasons playing for the UBC Thunderbirds women's hockey team after graduating from Brown University on Rhode Island, where she played NCAA Division 1 hockey for three seasons before getting injured. Because she still had a year of eligibility remaining at Brown, Asay was able to transfer to UBC to play.
During her two seasons with the T-birds, Asay played in 24 games each season, collecting 11 and 9 points on a team that finished last season with one win, 21 losses and two overtime losses. In 2010-11, the T-birds weren't much better posting a 7-16-1 record.
When Asay wasn't studying or training with the women's hockey team, she worked out with the T-birds men's baseball program.
"They've been really good at UBC they've let me come out and practice with them through the fall and some of their coaches, especially their catching coach, has been a lot of help and just really nice in letting me use their facilities," said Asay.
She said she'd like to continue to hang around with Canada's national team until at least 2015 when Toronto will host the Pan Am Games, assuming baseball will be announced as one of the sports in the games.
"It shouldn't be too hard to get a lot of training in this year still being at school," said Asay. "We'll see where things take me after I have to enter the real world and get a job."
