The numbers game is a losing battle this year for the Prince George Thunderbirds.
While they know they're good enough to be legitimate contenders at the provincial bantam girls softball championship, the size of the T-birds' flock is too small to make the long trip south to Port Alberni worthwhile.
Down to just eight players, the T-birds are facing the bitter reality they will end their season without a provincial crown.
"The girls are really disappointed, they were really totally forward to it," said T-birds manager Sarah Zacharias. "We've done exceptionally well in all our out-of-town tournaments; we were second at Softball City (in Surrey) and third in the Alberta tournament. We only had 10 (Prince George) players to begin with, and two girls from Quesnel who we had picked up."
With so few players, the T-birds needed the two Quesnel players (Shandy Johnson and Torry McKenzie) to field enough for a team. But last week Zacharias was informed Quesnel has entered a team for the C provincial championship and neither Johnson nor McKenzie (who won't be going to the C provincials) would be available for the provincial tournament, July 16-18.
The writing was already on the wall when for the Prince George team when catcher/pitcher Whitney Wilson suffered a serious knee injury in the Red Deer tournament in mid-June.
The other members of the bantam T-birds are: Caitlin Zacharias, Tynikka Cadle, Jess Chartrand, Nicole Jensen, Natalie McLaren, Dallas Tobin, Taylor Tobin, Levi Dunkley and Jordan Jagodnik. Heidi Wilson is the head coach.
See Thursday's Citizen for more
