Newmarket’s young baseball players will be taking on some of the top teams in the province as the 48th annual Don McKnight Silver Bat tournament gets underway this weekend.
The tournaments will feature 24 teams split across the 11U AAA and 11U AA/A levels vying for the coveted title trophy. Teams from as far as Windsor will play a weekend full of games at Ray Twinney Recreation Complex and Newmarket Fairgrounds.
Newmarket Hawks 11 AAA coach Chris Howie said he can recall playing in the tournament as a kid and now finds himself coaching in it decades later. He said it is appealing for teams to compete at a high-level tournament just a few weeks before the end-of-season provincial playoffs.
“It’s gonna be tough,” Howie said. “Considering they’re 11 years old, the quality of the baseball is excellent.”
The tournament dates back to 1975, the longest-lasting minor league baseball tournament in Newmarket. Each team will play a three-game round-robin, followed by a quarter-finals.
Howie said it garners a lot of traffic and business into the community, with all the teams and players coming in.
“I know the hotels are sold out,” Howie said. “We're trying to get all the teams to come into town and go to historic Main Street and experience Newmarket.”
It has been some time since a local team won with the calibre of competition, Howie said. The team spends plenty of time practising, with a lot going into coaching and pitching strategy, given all players on the team have to be able to pitch due to pitch counts.
“It’s a lot of strategy that goes into the lineup,” he said.
Plenty of former players and coaches from the tournament tend to come out to catch some of the games from the historic local tournament, Howie said.
“It’s nice to kind of tie in all the history here.”
But despite the high competition, Howie said teams try to keep in mind the bigger picture.
“This is about the kids. It’s about having fun, developing,” Howie said. “There’s no MLB scouts here for 11-year-olds, so let’s make sure everybody has fun.”
After a 10 a.m. start at the Newmarket Fairgrounds July 26, the AAA Hawks will play there at 7 p.m. the same day and 10 a.m. the next day. Quarterfinals will start at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Ray Twinney Recreation Complex, with all games taking place there after the round-robin.
