The hometown Sicamous Stingers came away as champions, defeating the Kelowna Storm 7-5 in the championship game at the U12 Girls Regional Provincial Championship held in Sicamous July 6-8 in Finlayson Park.
All the teams competed in a round robin format and were seeded after that. Sicamous had a three-win, one-loss record, with wins coming over Kamloops, Summerland and West Kelowna, and a tight loss to Kelowna. This resulted in a second-place seeding after round-robin play and a playoff match-up with the Kelowna Iron Maidens. Sicamous jumped out to an early lead against the Maidens behind the strong pitching of Niah Laroy, who had five strikeouts in her three innings of pitching. Sicamous held a 4-2 lead after three innings, and then blew the game open in the fourth inning with five runs on big hits from Jordann Carr, Alyssa Clark and a fine bunt from Taylor Grenier. Madison Dewitt came to pitch in relief of Laroy and promptly struck out eight of the next nine batters. Sicamous won the game 14-2 in a mercy decision.
The win set up a rematch with the Kelowna Storm, who had defeated Barriere to reach the final game and remain undefeated. Stinger pitcher Laroy led off the first inning by hitting a solo home run, her third of the championship. And then Laroy pitched a strong first three innings, holding Kelowna to four runs, with five strikeouts. With the game score 4-2 for Kelowna after three innings, the Sicamous bats came alive in the fourth inning, scoring five runs to take a 7-5 lead. Tiffany Sigvaldason led off with a single, Laroy with a double and Carr with a double, getting the Stingers rolling, with hits also from Grenier, and singles from Dewitt, Emily Gordon and Kaitlyn Sherlock, and a double from Alyssa Clark.
Clark came in and pitched a scoreless fourth inning, getting three strikeouts. Sicamous pitcher Madison Dewitt pitched the last three innings and struck out all nine batters to preserve the 7-5 win for the home team. A great way to finish a fine season: Regional Provincial Champion.
In the Boys Division, the Sicamous Predators had a great weekend as well, winning the silver medal after a hard fought 13-12 loss to Barriere in the final game.
After a record of two wins, two losses in round-robin play, the Predators faced a tough Enderby Boylers team in their first playoff game. Led by strong pitching from Brittany Northway and Julia Wilby, the Predators defeated Enderby 9-2 and advanced to the Boys Division final game. Jacob Dewitt went three for four at the plate and Ryan and Sean Spelay each had three hits as well. Tyler Kruger played great at catcher and Matthew Shaw had two hits and played a very strong third base. In the gold-medal game against Barriere, the Predators fell behind early and had to battle all game to catch up. Down to Barriere 13-7 in the fifth inning, the Predators rallied for five runs to make it a one-run game, but could not score the elusive tying run despite having runners at second and third in both the last two innings.
Hayden Gjaltema led the defence, making several great plays at second base. Ryan Spelay was strong as catcher and Dylan Peter and Connor Schmitz contributed several crucial base hits to help the offence.
All in all it was a great display of boys fastball.