Archive

Orangeville Men’s slo-pitch start 2018 season

May 17, 2018   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

After a long winter break, players on teams in the Orangeville Men’s Slo-pitch League made sure they warmed up prior to their games on opening day.

The League kicked off the 2018 season on the diamonds at Rotary Park on Saturday, May 12.

League convenor Jack Rogers made a special point of thanking the Town for putting some extra effort this year to get the diamonds ready for play two days ahead of schedule.

Most of the athletic fields both locally and in the region had a late start this year due to the late spring and some water logged fields.

Some outdoor activities were either postponed or changed venues to avoid causing damage to the turf.

The first games of the season got underway at 10:45 a.m. after a brief ceremony including a first pitch of the season by special guests, MP David Tilson.

“We have 18 teams this year,” Rogers said. “Right now we have an ‘A’ division and a ‘B’ division which will ultimately will probably add a ‘C’ division. The way the schedule works is everybody plays everybody through the months of May and June. What we do is we’ll sit down and judge who belongs where and we’ll form final divisions for the the last two months and our playoffs will last through September.

Because of the nature of slo-pitch, every year the League has some teams that are very competitive, some that are more of a recreational level, and several teams that are in the middle that can play everyone else.

“There are 16 teams returning this year including two teams, and there are four teams we had to turn away because we can’t get the diamond time,” Rogers said. “As it works out, we play Tuesdays and Thursdays and because we have 18 teams once every three weeks you’ll play only game that week. It’s a 32 game schedule.”

Slo-pitch is a wildly popular sport not only in Orangeville but around the province. Many teams participate in their league but also enter tournaments through the summer.

“Today is opening day. This is the first opening day ever for slo-pitch. We tried it last year but the weather didn’t agree. Next year we hope to expand on it. We have games going on all day today. The first games started at 10:45 and the last game goes at 3:30.”

The diamonds at Rotary Park will be sounding with the crack of the bats all summer long.


Readers Comments (0)





Please note: Comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment.