The prairie fields of Saskatchewan were paved with gold for B.C. softball teams.
B.C. won three of the four softball tournaments at the North American Indigenous Games and Prince George players were part of all three championship victories.
Martina Spooner and the B.C. under-16 girls were first up to bat with the celebrations Friday after they beat host Saskatchewan 6-5 in the gold medal game.
Prince George players Tanelle Smith and Sydney Caplette, as well as Sahara Tom of Burns Lake were next in line to clinch softball gold in the under-19 women's tournament final Saturday morning, part of a 10-0 mercy-rule win over Wisconsin.
Team B.C.'s under-19 male squad, which includes seven Prince George players, then capped the day at the diamond Saturday afternoon, defeating host Saskatchewan 14-5 in a six-inning mercy-rule shortened championship game.
It was a perfect ending after six days of competition in 14 sports for B.C., which used the three gold medal wins to top the overall medal standings with 160, one more than Saskatchewan's second-place 159 total. B.C. finished with 63 gold, 49 silver and 48 bronze.
In the U-19 boys final, cleanup hitter Nicholas Potskin of Prince George cleared the bases with a three-run home run in the third inning off Lane Constant, and B.C. put up four more runs in the fourth inning to take a 8-2 lead they would never relinquish.
"I saw before [Constant] was pitching everyone first-pitch rise balls and I was waiting for it and he put it right there," said Potskin. "We just got fired up and the defence came through and we got more offence. We didn't expect to mercy them, we just played our best game of the tournament."
Clarke Ohman hit an RBI triple in the fourth, with two runs already in for B.C., and with the score 6-2, pitcher Josh Anderson of Surrey knocked out a two-run home run off reliever Riley Mathieu.
Saskatchewan got two runs back in the bottom of the inning. Already incensed after a ball hit by Constant down the third base line was ruled fair in the third inning, the B.C. protests continued in the fifth inning with nobody out when an apparent shoestring catch from right fielder Zack Gottfriedson of Kamloops was ruled to have hit the ground before it got to his outstretched glove. Knowing with just two reserve players his team could ill afford an ejection, B.C. coach Randy Potskin came out to remind with his players of the importance of keeping their cool, and the inning ended with Saskatchewan trailing 8-5.
B.C. added five more in the sixth inning to compete the blowout.
"We were hoping for gold and we got it," said Anderson, who pitched four of the five tournament games. "We thought it was going to be close. I started feeling pain in my arm at the beginning of the game but the adrenaline of the gold medal game I didn't even feel it in the last inning, it was just gone."
Key in the B.C. boys' romp to the U-19 championship was the fact the core of the team -- Nicholas Potskin, Theo Potskin, Tre Potskin, Tyson Ghostkeeper, Trent Seymour, Lane Desjarlais and Shelby Tom, all of Prince George -- played as the Falcon Contracting underage team this summer in the Spruce City Major Men's Fastball Association. They faced power pitchers and learned how to hit against men and play defence.
The U-19 squad, which included Jordan Ohman of Vancouver, also drew from the knowledge of their coaches, Randy Potskin and Chad Ghostkeeper, who have been involved as national and international fastball players for the better part of two decades.
"A lot of the guys from Prince George take it for granted because they're relatives [of Ghostkeeper and Potskin]," said Barry Seymour, "but I explained to the guys this morning that they've got two high-calibre players as coaches who are very experienced and they should listen to them because they've been at all levels of ball and they're still playing at those levels.
"We had a few hotheads and one of the biggest challenges was keeping people cool and they did, and we managed to get through without anybody getting kicked out."
In the U-19 girls final, Chelsey Wilson of Surrey pitched the shutout. Leading 2-0 in the sixth inning, B.C. added four runs in the sixth and four in the seventh. Caplette walked to load the bases with one out and scored from third on Wilson's flare to left field. Smith was a constant threat in the final as the leadoff hitter for B.C.
