Quesnel Tree Removal Squeeze put the squeeze on the competition at the slo-pitch nationals in Kelowna at the beginning of the month, taking bronze in the Women’s C Division.
It was the team’s first swing at provincials, which left the impressive results a pleasant surprise.
“Going into the tournament, we didn’t know what we were up against, so I was going to be happy winning just one game,” head coach Lorne Lilley said.
In fact, the team surpassed his expectations in the first two games.
Lilley attributed much of the success of the team to a very strong defense, saying the shortstop and fielders played an amazing game.
While the fielders were snatching runs out from under opposing teams, the teams uneven offence was the sticking point.
“Our batting was hit or miss,” Lilley said.
In their first game, the Squeeze squeezed by Kelowna’s Better Than Nature in their first game, 10-9.
They then went on to beat Abbortsford’s No Excuses with a commanding 6-1 final score.
The two wins finished the first day of the tournament on a high note.
The next day, the women hit a hard case in the Dirty Jersey River Cats. The River Cats played a strong offence and beat the Squeeze 8-1.
After the difficult defeat at the hands of The River Cats, the Squeeze played Hokum, a team of Saskatoon. The game stayed close for the duration, forcing the game into extra innings. Hokum made the best use of the extra innings edging ahead of the Squeeze by two points and taking the win.
The second day marked the end of round robin play, with the playoffs starting the next day.
The Quesnel women started off the playoffs against the No Eyed Deers, who Lilley called an all star team as they pulled the best players from around the Lower Mainland: Mission, Langley and Surrey.
The No Eyed Deers proved difficult, taking the game well in hand and beating Quesnel 9-2.
The Squeeze shook off the loss, going into their next game against Hokum, who had given them some trouble in the round robin. This time, however, Quesnel found their hitting and sank the Saskatoon team, 13-0, which ended their first day of the playoffs.
The Dirty Jersey River Cats started off the Squeeze’s day again, but this time the Squeeze didn’t let the River Cats run. They pumped up their already strong defense allowing Kamloops only two runs off of their 12 hits to take the game 5-2.
Quesnel next faced another team that had given them trouble the day before: the No Eyed Deers. Once again, the Squeeze reversed the previous result, knocking down the Lower Mainland team 7-5.
With the sun beating down and the Quesnel women working hard to beat teams who had beaten them, they were getting tired.
“We ran out of gas,” Lilley said.
And for the third time that day, the results of previous games were flipped, only this time in favour of the opposition, with No Excuses taking the win 13-4.
The loss pushed them to third overall, a position which the team was happy with.
The Fembots were also in Kelowna for the tournament and took eleventh in the women’s D division.
The Squeeze, and other slo-pitch teams now have their eyes on provincials, which feed into nationals next summer.
And Lilley knows what they need to get the wins in provincials.
“We’re definitely going to be doing a lot of hitting practice for the next two weeks,” Lilley said.