The 2024 Baseball Canada Cup Championships begin this week.
The best young male players from all 10 provinces between the ages of 16-18 will be in Fort McMurray for the tournament.
It starts with the opening ceremonies this evening and then includes tournament games from Wednesday through Sunday.
Desmond Bouteiller from Red Deer County will be one of the Assistant Coaches for Team Alberta. He says “I was lucky enough with my time working with the girls program, with Team Alberta and was asked last year to be on Mark Randall’s staff with Team Alberta at the Canada Cup where we went to Regina. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite have the result we wanted. Lucky enough, one of the other Assistants – Josh Bishop – took the role as Head Coach this year and we had a really good rapport and asked me if I would assume my role as an Assistant Coach again this year. So it has been a lot of fun.”
It is the second year in a row he will have the opportunity to coach at the event and the team is excited to be hosting it in this province. Bouteiller says “we’re excited to be on home turf this year. We’ve got a really good squad this year. Alberta is producing some top notch baseball talent and we’re going to see it again here. We actually, similar to last year, we identify 40 players that we want to look at specifically for our roster of 20. So this year we took 20, played the Edmonton prospects and took the other 20 and played the Sylvan Lake Gulls. Out of that pool of 40, we get it down to 20 but I tell you it was really tough, tough decisions this year. As Josh mentioned to the boys that were at either game, we could probably take this 20 and represent Alberta at the Canada Cup but unfortunately we do have to get our roster down to a manageable size. But good problems to have and really excited to see what we can do. I’m really excited to see what Fort McMurray brings. We’ve actually, I think we’ve got three or four players from Fort McMurray. Again, it’s turning into a booming baseball community and it shows with the products they are putting out there. We are excited to see how Alberta embraces this fantastic tournament.”
According to Bouteiller, Zach MacDonald from Lacombe is one of the players from this region who will be representing Alberta on the national stage. He says “MacDonald just finished first in batting average in the elite league in the province as a first year player. He was really one that we knew a little bit about. He played out in Stettler, and so I had the opportunity to coach against him last year. I knew him a little bit, but it was going to be difficult as a first year player. But, man, he has taken it and ran with it. Really excited to see him manning first base for us at the tournament as a first year. Pretty amazing.”
He says Team Alberta’s roster is mostly made up of 17 year olds, with a couple of 16 year olds as well as a couple of overage players, so they will have two 18 year olds.
Team Alberta’s first game at this year’s Baseball Canada Cup in Fort Mac is on Wednesday, August 7th at 7pm against Manitoba.
The gold medal game is slated for Sunday, August 11th at 7pm.