Manitoba put in a strong showing at the Western Canada 14U Girls Baseball Championship in Spruce Grove, AB.

A strong BC team proved to be their downfall, however, as Manitoba fell in the gold medal game 15-6.

"It was a real strong team effort to come away with silver," said head coach Dean Sproule, who noted the marked improvement in his squad over the past year. Team Manitoba did not win a single game at the 2017 Western Canada Championship in Kamloops. "This year, we knew we had a good team that were able to put all the pieces together at the end of the year."

The loss against the BC Selects wasn't Manitoba's first of the tournament. The best in the west downed Manitoba 13-6 in their round robin opener. Coach Sproule noted that a costly inning cost Manitoba the chance to be competitive in that first match. "If not for that one inning, I think we would have taken that game."

The team was able to brush off that blemish of a game and recover quickly in their next matches. Manitoba followed up their opening loss by edging out team Ontario 13-12 and beating Alberta 5-2. Manitoba then closed out their round robin play with a 12-11 win over Saskatchewan. That qualified them for a rematch with team BC for the tournament championship.

"Really, what I told the girls after we had lost the final game, I said, 'You guys should be holding your head up and you should really be proud of what we accomplished as a team.'"

The tournament featured plenty of offensive firepower in a close tournament, which saw scores go as high as 30 in some games, and only one game where both teams stayed under 10 runs. In addition, Manitoba's round robin match against Alberta was the only game in the tournament where neither team exceeded 10 runs. Sproule noted that a key to the team's success was an increased emphasis on developing strong pitching in order to minimize damage. "We did our best," said Sproule. "At the end of the day, we had some good, sound pitching. It really says something about our defence and our pitching ability."

The Eastman region was represented strongly by Coach Sproule, who hails from Niverville along with Kennedy Sproule, Chloe Gauthier of Ste. Anne, Kennedy Toews of Blumenort and Mercedees Gorham of Steinbach.