By Adam Prudhomme
Beaver Sports
Napanee’s Casa Art Adventure U14 Express will begin their quest for a top four finish at the PWSA Novice Girls Qualifier tomorrow evening at 6 p.m. when they host the Mississauga North Jr. Tigers.
That game will be the start of a busy weekend at the Napanee Fairgrounds, as the Express play host to the 12 team, double knock-out tournament.
Napanee will be aiming for at least a top four finish at the tournament, which would qualify them for the ‘A’ division of the Grand Championship, which will be held in LaSalle, July 28-30. Teams that finish five through eight will be relegated to the ‘B’ championship division while nine through 12 are placed in ‘C’.
The home team will be made up of Payton Barkley, Nikki Weese, Melissa Reynolds, Robyn McCallum, Payton Hutcheson, Elle Chapman, Dakota Weese, Lauren Sutton, Samantha Smith, Morgan Salter, Marina Jackson and Alexis Flear.
To prepare for this weekend’s tournament, the Novice Express have been playing in the Eastern Ontario Minor Softball League, up against boys peewee teams.
“The hope is that by playing some of the tougher teams and the boys teams we’ll make sure that we’re ready for this tournament,” said Jason Barkley, head coach of the host Express team.
This past weekend they took part in an exhibition tournament, taking on Oakville, Kingston and Richmond Hill.
“A good chance to see our competition prior to the qualifier and see where we stack up,” said Barkley. “We haven’t seen our opening team (the Jr. Tigers), but for instance you win that game and we would face the winner of the next game, which would be someone from the North York Women’s League. So we have an upper hand in that we’re playing teams that we’re at least familiar with so it’s a good situation to be in.”
Playing in Napanee for the weekend will be a nice change of pace for the club, which spends most of its summer travelling to Baltimore, near Cobourg.
“We don’t get too many fans coming up to see us,” Barkley says of the road games. “Even when we’re playing in the boys league, we’re going anywhere from Oshawa to Westport. It’s quite a bit of travel, it’ll be nice to sleep in our own bed.”
Barkley says a quick commute to the diamonds will be a welcome change as well. In their last tournament in Stratford the closest hotel was 45 minutes from the ballpark.
With a win tomorrow night, the Express would advance to face the winner of the Kawartha Lakers and Peterborough Thunder game, which will be taking place on the adjacent diamond, also starting at 6 p.m.
The winners of Friday’s game would square off at 9 a.m. Saturday while the losing clubs would meet in a must win game at 11 a.m. on Saturday.
Rounding out the 12 team field is the Port Perry Angels, Aurora Diggers, Kingston Kobras, Durham Lady Mets, Richmond Hill Ravens, South Oshawa Angels, Stittsville ‘56ers and the Mississauga North Sr. Tigers. Barkley says he expects the Sr. Tigers to be the early favourite, though anything can happen in a short weekend tournament..
A full list of the tournament draw schedule is available online at www.SoftballNapanee.com.