2006 Women's ChampionshipsDates TBA   Gatineau, Québec

The second annual Baseball Canada Women’s National Invitational Championship is set to get underway Thursday at Sanscartier Park in Gatineau, Québec.

The championship, which will be held from July 20 to 23, will feature the best female baseball players in the country, representing five teams from Ontario (2), Québec, Alberta and Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia and Ontario 2 will face-off in the tournament opener slated for 4 p.m. Thursday, July 20^th while the bronze and gold medal games are schedule for Sunday afternoon.

“Anybody that makes it out to these games is going to get treated to a very good show,” said National Team Head Coach André Lachance. “The championship will also present a good opportunity for young girls who play baseball in the area to see first-hand that women’s baseball is healthy and that it is possible to play the sport at a very high level.”

In addition to fighting for national women’s baseball supremacy, the best female baseball players in Canada will also be fighting for a spot on Baseball Canada’s women’s national team, which will travel to compete in the Women’s World Cup July 31 to Aug. 7 in Taipei, Taiwan.

The national tournament will double as a try-out camp where Lachance and national team staff will select the team’s 18-person roster before departing for Taiwan on July 24^th, less than 24 hours after the final out of the national championships.

“It’s definitely not a vacation weekend for team officials,” said Lachance. “It’s never easy to put together an 18-person roster for the World Cup because you know that everybody out there has a burning desire to wear the red and white at the World Cup. That being said, we have complete confidence that the athletes we chose will be ready and more than capable of well representing our country in Taipei.”

Click here for a complete tournament schedule

Click here for the Baseball Canada’s Women’s National Team program