Evan Gorman and Chase McKay from Grand Forks represented the West Kootenay in recent provincial baseball play downs. 

Both players participated at the Sussex Insurance AAA Tournament Capital Tournament in Kamloops July 2-4 with teams from Alberta and BC. 

The Tournament Capital tournament is one of the largest youth baseball events in the province.  The West Kootenay Rockies won the consolation game over the Kamloops Reds to finish 5th.  We had a couple of tough loses over Sherwood Park Cardinals and Edmonton White Sox which were teams of 13 year olds that play together all year says head coach Larry Martel. 

The Kootenay boys were much younger because we play in a different baseball association where age requirements were slightly different but we have the same skill level that the larger centered team had and we definitely got better as the tournament went along. We had very good batting but our small errors in the outfield became our Achilles heal and put us in the consolation game instead of the finals on Sunday.  

Then the Rockies travelled to Cranbrook to the Kootenay Challenge Invitational with four teams, host Cranbrook , Medicine Hat and Lethbridge going up against the West Kootenay representatives. 

Evan had some very strong games pitching for the Rockies and also played catcher and short stop.  His defensive skills impressed many of the coaches at both Kamloops and Cranbrook tournaments. 

Chase is the youngest member of the Rockies but you wouldn’t have noticed that with his bat going 4-4 at the plate in one game vs. Lethbridge and was the difference in a 14-13 win over the Alberta all-star team. 

Chase also made some great defensive plays in the infield at second and third base also.

The WK Rockies are considering other tournament invites later this month and into August.