They didn't win the game.
In fact, most of their games at the provincial boys under-18 softball championship last weekend in Surrey ended in blowout losses.
Despite their 0-6 record in the tournament, the Timberwolves still managed to claim the bronze medal for their efforts. The underaged squad took it on the chin on the scoreboard, facing older, more experienced opponents, but the experience of playing in what was, for many of the Prince George players, their first provincial softball tournament, made the trip south worthwhile.
To field enough players for a team, the Timberwolves were a collection of peewee, bantam and midget age players. Lacking any other boys teams in the Central Interior region to play against during their short two-month season, they took on midget house league teams from the Prince George Minor Girls Softball Association to help them prepare for the provincial tournament.
The tournament involved three A-level teams and three C-level teams and the T-wolves played four preliminary round games against a cross-section of all the teams. The teams were then pooled for the medal round according to their respective levels.
In the C-division playoffs, Prince George squared off against the Port Alberni Blazers, who built a four-run lead after 4 1/2 innings when the 90-minute game time limit was reached. Port Alberni went on to lose the next game to the Clearwater Crushers, the eventual champions, and that set up a rematch Sunday between the T-wolves and Blazers. Port Alberni pounded out a 15-run lead in the fourth inning when the mercy rule kicked in to end the game.
"Our team, we've got kids between the ages of 14 and 18, Clearwater, they're all shaving," said T-wolves coach Mitch Houg. "They're 18 and 19 years old and they've been together forever and they play good ball. These kids were seeing 70 -mile-an-hour pitching and people who could slug it and make plays. We had innings where we we're right there with them and then we'd have innings where the B-team showed up.
"We had so many two-out, two strike (situations) and then the wheels came off. They were, of course, pretty down in the mouth at the end of it, but by the time we got home, they were happy and thought it was great. It was a wonderful experience for them. It was a lot of fun, they're a great bunch of kids."
The Timberwolves player roster includes Dayna McKenney, Braeden Boomhower, Rodney Christensen, Dallas Jones, Martyn Kelly, Damien Seymour-George, Aidan Faucher, Zach Hutchinson, Gabe Edwards, Zack Edwards and Branden Edwards. Sheryl Edwards is the team manager and Richard Boomhower is the assistant coach;
