With the provincial government announcing Tuesday that sports could return in the province beginning May 30, the local league quickly moved into high gear to get things into place -- and if everything goes according to plan, teams could be facing one another as soon as early next week.
“It was good news today, and I’m a little bit shocked that we’ve been bumped up, but it’s really exciting,” said Moose Jaw Little League president Tony Dreger. “We’ve been practicing for almost a month, and we have a fantastic board that has been working on preparing and getting things ready. We’ve been scheduling practices two weeks at a time just in case we needed to kick into gear, and now we’re hoping that we’re going to start June 1 if we can.”
MJLL started their heavily modified season at the beginning of May and followed government restrictions that saw teams practicing in pods of eight with a couple of coaches. No games could be played, of course, as gatherings of that type remained prohibited.
Now that has all changed, the plan is to put together an eight- to 10-game schedule for each of the league’s teams followed by a playoff of some type in June to crown division champions.
There will be a lot of games to be played, too -- registration was impressively high this spring, with nearly 30 teams spread across their six age groups, including seven teams each in the Senior Rookie and Minor house leagues.
“So for what happened last year and this year going into the season with COVID, our numbers are really strong and we’re super happy with it,” Dreger said.
The plan once games are back on the field will be similar to what happened last summer when the go-ahead was given -- follow the protocols and be careful as possible while having plenty of fun.
“We really wanted to give these kids something to do and get this off the ground as best we could while following the protocols and all that stuff, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that,” Dreger said. “We’re just excited that we’ll be able to get some games going and get games off the ground.”
As for the AAA Minor and Major teams -- the latter of which are still reigning provincial champions, having represented the province at Little League Canadians in the summer of 2019 -- things are still up in the air. Little League Canada has cancelled nationals for 2021, meaning if anything happens, it’ll remain in-province.
“Saskatchewan Little League is talking about a possible provincial tournament, but nothing is confirmed and we’ll just wait and see what it all looks like,” Dreger said.
