Jubilee Park was a hive of activity throughout the weekend, largely due to 10 baseball teams from across the province converging on Weyburn for the 11U AA Tier 4 Provincial Championships. It would be an excellent event, with over 120 players and their families coming to the city. In the end, Weyburn would lift the championship, overcoming Battleford in the final Sunday afternoon.

The tournament, though, almost didn’t happen. At least, the Tier 4 tournament.

Initially, Weyburn was scheduled to host the 11U AA Tier 2 tournament, with teams from across Saskatchewan. Then, in late June, the Saskatchewan Baseball Association stated Weyburn could no longer host the tournament as they were too competitive, and needed to be put into the 11U AAA category. This came after weeks of planning for the event, lining up sponsors, arranging concessions, finding volunteers and more.

It appeared Weyburn was about to lose a major sporting event thanks to a decision made outside of the city. However, there was another 11U team in the city that didn’t know where they were going to be playing their provincial championships.

“About two weeks ago, we found out our division (Tier 4) had no host, and we wanted to boys to have a tournament,” said Erik Anderson. “So, two of us on the team said we will do it – myself and Melissa Francis. We called around town and, well, kudos to Weyburn.”

Organizing a baseball tournament can take quite a bit of work to do, and can be time-consuming. Now, Anderson and the 11U Tier 4 team had just two weeks to get everything lined up. However, the timeline seemed to help Anderson.

“It was stressful, to say the least,” he chuckled, “But, I thought, well, it’ll be over in two weeks, I don’t have to worry about it for six weeks or two months.”

The tournament would be wildly successful, with sponsors lining up to help out, concessions found, and volunteers able to help with scorekeeping and more during the tournament.

Anderson recognized the role that hosting sports events can have in the community.

“We think stiff like this brings a lot of money into the community, and we get to showcase the beautiful town we’ve got,” Anderson added. “It was a lot of fun, and yea, we were glad the boys were able to win in the final but we had a great weekend.”