Women's teams relegated to dirt field at national softball championships

Terri Cairns is not impressed. 

The Yukon softball player is a member of the host team for this year's Canadian Slo-Pitch Championships in Whitehorse, and she's not feeling a lot of pride as the women's tournament gets underway. 

That's because many of the women's games will be played on a dirt diamond, across the road from Softball Yukon's well-appointed, grass-field Pepsi Centre — where the men's teams will play.

"I just feel that we've been slighted," she said, calling the hard dirt field "an embarrassment" that's not worthy of a national event.

"We've had a really hot summer, the [field's] dirt is like concrete, there's no protective buffer on the chain link fencing, there's no advertising, there's very little spectator space," Cairns said.

Karri Johnson, a player on the "B.C. Adrenaline" team, agrees that the women's field is far from ideal. She points to "huge rocks out there", that she feels will make it difficult, or even dangerous, to dive for a ball.

"I think that if they can't host here to have grass fields for the ladies, then I don't think they should have [the tournament] in Yukon." 

'Sheer numbers'

George Arcand of Softball Yukon admits the decision to schedule women's games outside of the Pepsi Centre was "unfortunate", but said it only effects the round-robin play, with the top women's teams playing their final games at the Pepsi Centre. 

He says the decisions were based on "sheer numbers. The men hit the ball 400 feet and require the bigger park.

"There's 18 men's teams and nine women['s], so we have to accommodate the size of the game, and the size of the parks." 

Softball Canada's Mike Branchaud, the manager of the Canadian championships, said it's a matter of "making the best of what we can do."

He said the 2016 tournament was nearly cancelled, before Whitehorse agreed to play host.

"Softball Yukon stepped up to the event and said, 'you know what, if you don't have a host, we'll host this event. This is our diamonds that we have here, this is what we have to work with'," Branchaud said.

"So the provinces and territories were fully aware of what the parameters were, and what diamonds they were going to be playing on. So I don't know why there's an issue now."

But Cairns said the issue is not just the dirt field, which she said players were willing to accept. She's more annoyed that so little was done to try to improve it, ahead of the tournament.

"I know people are going to get injured. People are going to get cut up," she said.

"It would have been nice to have seen a water truck out there trying to soften the field, nice to see some things to put in place for safety, maybe some flags or banners being put up."

The Canadian Slo-Pitch Championships continue until Saturday.