ST. LAWRENCE, P.E.I. — Jeff Ellsworth and Mark Quinn are looking forward to helping teenagers from across the country quickly mesh as they try to qualify for the world junior softball championship.
“When we come together Saturday night in Toronto that will be the first time that we’ve gotten together as a full squad,” said Ellsworth, the St. Lawrence native and longtime national team player.
This is his third cycle coaching the national junior squad, but there have been some big changes from the previous incarnations. The age has been dropped from an under-19 squad to an under-17 team and now there is a qualifier before the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) world cup.
Canada’s 15-player squad leaves Sunday for Guatemala. It needs to finish in the top four at the eight-team tournament to earn a spot in the worlds in New Zealand in February. Canada will play each of the other seven teams in a round robin with the top teams playing for gold and the next two squads meeting for bronze.
“They know what’s at stake,” Ellsworth said of his players.
Quinn is one of the three assistant coaches on the staff. He has worked with Ellsworth the previous two cycles and was responsible for the pitchers the last time. This time around he is working with the defence and has been in charge of implementing a fitness regime for the squad.
“It’s very exciting,” Quinn said. “It’s a whole new crop of athletes that we haven’t had a chance to train a lot with sort of face-to-face as a team or play any exhibition games with.”
The staff also includes Kalen Kovitch from Saskatchewan and Shaun Winship from Ontario. Winship is working with the squad’s pitchers with four of the five living in Ontario.
Quinn, a Cardigan native, has worked with Nova Scotia’s Brody Fraser, the lone Atlantic Canadian to make the team, who rounds out the five-pitcher staff.
Fraser, who comes from a family with strong softball, hockey and basketball roots, can also play the infield corner positions.
“Brody has worked extremely hard at his overall game, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how he does when he gets out on the field and has a chance to produce,” Quinn said.
Ellsworth said they scouted the players and ran them through skill tests before selecting its roster in mid-August. It will use a series of exhibition games to determine where players fit best for the tournament which begins on Saturday.
“We, the coaches, will figure out the puzzle pieces,” he said.
Canada finished third and fourth, respectively, at the past two WBSC junior championship.
If the team does qualify this time around it will mean a bit of a homecoming for Quinn, who played softball in New Zealand for about eight years. The tournament will be held about an hour away from where Quinn toed the rubber while pitching in New Zealand.
