Linda Barbondy-Rich of Williams Lake is still savouring a recent win her slo-pitch team brought home from Hawaii.
The Rowdies were one of 10 teams competing at the tournament in Waikiki from Nov. 2 to 4.
“It was absolutely crazy, I still cannot believe it,” she said of the win.
In the four-game round robin, the Rowdies played a team from Winnipeg, two from Vancouver Island and one from Wyoming, winning all four games.
During the semi-final game against the Finishers, a team from Vancouver Island, the Rowdies were down eight runs in the final inning.
Things turned around and they went on to get nine runs, and win, which Barbondy-Rich described as ‘unbelievable.”
In the final game, against the Eager Beavers from Winnipeg, the Rowdies won 22-11.
“It doesn’t get any better than that - winning a tournament in Hawaii.”
She heard of the tournament through an advertisement on Facebook in June and pitched the idea of going to her team.
Sixteen people went, she said, including the team’s sponsors Derek and Juanita Beaulieu of Cariboo Weatherdek & Construction and Courtnee Sanford who was the team’s official scorekeeper.
There were three teams from Winnipeg and Julie Porter, who organized the tournament, was also from there.
Barbondy-Rich said the tournament had been around for 30 years but stopped during COVID.
Porter had attended a couple times and took over organizing it.
There was a team from England at the tournament, but the Williams Lake team did not get to play them, much to Barbondy-Rich’s disappointment.
“I was really hoping we would play them in the semi-finals.”
A few Williams Lake players who had signed up to go had to drop out, but Barbondy-Rich got some players in Hawaii to fill the spots after she put out a message saying players were needed.
The team flew from Vancouver, rented condos and stayed right in Waikiki.
They were about a 10-minute walk from the fields, which were open grass with no fences, very different than the ones the Rowdies play on at home.
“It’s definitely a challenge,” she said.
“There is nothing stopping the ball when it goes foul. It was not how we are used to playing ball.”
While in Hawaii it was humid, windy and hot with highs of 30C in the day and only going down to 28C during at night.
“We could see the ocean and the Diamond Head volcano from where we were playing,” she said.
In the past the team has travelled to tournaments in Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica and Dominican, but had not gone out of the country to play since 2013.
To get there, the players paid their own way and the sponsors helped with new shirts and hats.
Barbondy-Rich hopes the team can go somewhere again in two years, but is not sure just where.
In the meantime she is already thinking about the next season back home in Williams Lake.
“Before we went to Hawaii we did some work up at the fields. We put top soil on field number one, did some fencing and more stump grinding.”
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