Lucas Punkari
After a hiatus of more than three decades, plans are in the works to have a women’s fastball league return to Rainy River District.
A meeting to gauge overall interest is slated for tomorrow (May 2) at 6 p.m. at the Couchiching multi-use facility.
“I used to play when I was younger and the league itself was very strong back in the 1970s,” noted Holly Cogger, who is spearheading the effort to resurrect the league.
“What we are hoping to do here is to basically have a similar league to what the guys have now,” she explained.
“And I know that there is a lot of interest among the ladies who want to have a league here.”
Cogger said she noticed a lot of interest in a ladies’ fastball league during last year’s Rainy River District Fastball League season when men’s fastball returned to Couchiching with the newly-formed Raiders.
“When Randy and Chris Morrisseau brought a team here last year, it was surprising to see the amount of support that the Raiders had throughout the community and at the games,” she noted.
“I had a lot of the younger ladies come up to me and ask if the ladies can get involved, and since then I’ve been working to get this going,” Cogger added.
“There are quite a few of the younger ladies who want to get involved, and for many of them there isn’t much for them to do once their soccer seasons wind down.”
While there hasn’t been ladies’ fastball here in a long time, Cogger has been in contact with a very successful league that’s only a few hours away.
The Dryden Ladies Fastball League has been in existence for more than four decades.
“They had nine teams in their league last year, and I’ve been e-mailing them back-and-forth on how they do things up there,” Cogger said.
“We’re hoping to get involved with them as much as we can, and we already have plans to have their teams come down for a tournament here on Labour Day weekend,” she enthused.
“Back in the day, that weekend was huge for fastball tournaments.”
While Cogger would love to have 10-12 teams in a local ladies’ league, which would hold their games on Monday and Wednesday evenings starting near the end of May, her main goal for this season is just to get the league off on a solid footing.
“We’re hoping to get as many women out as we can,” she said. “And even if we just start out with four teams, that will be good as we can build up from that.
“Our main goal at the moment is to get the word out to everyone that we are organizing a ladies’ league this year, and we can hopefully have more tournaments and the whole nine yards as we go forward,” she reasoned.
Those unable to attend tomorrow night’s meeting can contact Cogger for more information on the league at 274-1060.
