Sports

Orangeville Bengals host provincial U9 AA tournament

September 8, 2022   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

The Orangeville and Headwaters Minor Baseball Association, hosted the U9 AA Ontario Baseball Championships at diamonds around Orangeville Sept. 2 to 4, with 16 teams from around the province taking part.

“These are [the] top 16 AA teams in Ontario squaring off for the provincial title,” explained Orangeville and Headwaters Minor Baseball Association president, Jesse Edmunds. “There is Sarnia, LaSalle, Niagara Falls is here, Clarington, Mississauga, Barrie, and Clarington, to name a few. This is the first time we’ve hosted at this age level. It’s been at least six years since this level of baseball has been hosted here. We’re playing at Rotary North and South diamonds, Idlewyld, Springbrook, and we have one game scheduled at the Alton diamond.”

At this age level, there is no pitcher on the mound. Rather a pitching machine delivers the ball across the plate. This makes the pitches consistent and there is a lot of hitting creating a lot of action on the bases.

The players are highly skilled for their age.

“They get five hittable pitches, so it’s the umpire’s discretion if the pitch could be hit,” Edmunds explained. “We have 16 teams so there’s somewhere between 150 to 180 kids in the tournament and their families. This event is drawing in around 1,000 people into town for the weekends. The tournament is a double knock-out elimination. If you lose two games, you go home. When you get to the final game, generally you’ll have one undefeated team and a team that’s lost one game. If you get to the final, and the team that’s lost one game beats the team that is undefeated, they have to beat them again to win. We have some really good teams here.”

Hosting a tournament of this size takes a lot of work and the Orangeville Bengals want to be proud of their town and diamonds when games are taking place. The Town of Orangeville helped out a lot to make sure the tournament was a success.

“I can’t thank the town enough,” Edmunds said. “They were dragging the fields in between every single game. That’s a big deal, especially on a long weekend.”

The Bengals played well, winning their first game of the tournament over the Waterloo Tigers.

During the second day of competition, the Bengals were eliminated after taking losses to Guelph and Barrie.

The Guelph Royals won the championship with a 15-5 win over the Cambridge Cubs. 

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