Normally, that wouldn’t necessarily be a good sign. But this time around, it was as positive news as could be.
The provincial government had just announced that teams could return to playing games beginning May 30 as part of Phase 1 of the province’s re-opening plan, which meant Okerstrom suddenly had a new project on his hands.
“It was surprising this morning, my phone started blowing up within a minute after the announcement, and I was wondering what the heck was going on,” Okerstrom said with a laugh Tuesday afternoon. “We’re trying to make things happen for Monday and I think we have it all lined up, it’s been the whole day trying to do that.”
There was some concern that things wouldn’t happen this fast. A meeting between the province’s business response team, Sask Sport and a slew of provincial sports organizations hadn’t come away with concrete answers, which left Softball Sask thinking it would be Phase 2 and late June before they could start.
“So it’s good news and we’re looking forward to playing games here pretty quick,” Okerstrom said.
The key now is figuring out how deep into the summer everyone wants to go. There’s currently a poll on the organization’s Facebook page asking members to vote for weekend games to prevent contests spilling into August, or to go with the status quo and play games later into the year like 2020.
“We know if we go into July, it’ll affect our provincial teams and playoffs could be dragged on, and with weather delays we could even end up in August, which for some teams and players, they might not want to stick around for that,” Okerstrom said. “Putting in some weekend games would keep it confined to June and not go very far into July… The option that we have because we can’t run tournaments the first three weeks in June is to run some weekend games and we want to make sure our membership is okay with that, which is why we have the poll.”
As of Tuesday evening, the poll was 90 per cent in favour of weekend games.
Fortunately, like most sports organizations in the city, teams had already been on the field for quite some time, practicing in the groups-of-eight format that has become commonplace throughout the late stages of the pandemic.
That means rosters are ready to go, and it’s just a matter of getting the schedule of games in place.
“We have the second-highest registration numbers, and the highest number of out-of-town registrations, too, so there are a lot of teams to fit in,” Okerstrom said. “It’s a good problem to have for sure.”
As for the Moose Jaw Ice representative teams, there’s still some question as to what their season will look like. While they were able to play last season with no difficulties, conditions with COVID-19 weren’t nearly as severe as they are now.
“That’s a little more unknown, we’re waiting to hear from the BRT on that,” Okerstrom said. “We have our designated Ice nights already, and it’s possible that we’ll have some games here, but that’s assuming we can play Regina. It was allowed last year when we had restrictions in place so we’re hoping for the same this time.”
For the latest information, be sure to stay up to date on their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/groups/51671886153.
